New Delhi: Congress leader Sajjan Kumar has resigned from the Congress by submitting his resignation from the primary membership of the party. He has written to the party president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday informing the same. "I tender my resignation with immediate effect from the primary membership of the Indian National Congress in the wake of the judgement of the hon'be high court of Delhi against me," he said in the letter to Gandhi.

On Monday, the Delhi High Court convicted Kumar for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. The court said it was perpetrated by those with "political patronage" and pushed for a new law for speedy prosecution of genocide and mass killings.

However, the victims, who claimed they faced threats and oppression in their long legal battle, wished they had got justice earlier and demanded that the leaders involved in the violence should be given a punishment befitting their reprehensible crime of "murdering innocents".

Describing the riots as "crimes against humanity", the high court awarded Kumar life term for "remainder of his natural life", convicting him of criminal conspiracy and abetment in commission of crimes of murder, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of communal harmony and defiling and destruction of a Gurdwara.

The case in which Kumar was convicted related to killing of five Sikhs in Raj Nagar part-I area in Palam Colony in South West Delhi on November 1-2, 1984 during the riots in the national capital and other parts of the country following the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her two Sikh bodyguards on October 31.