Rahul Gandhi refuses to comment on Sajjan sentencing

"I have made my position on the riots very clear, and I have said this before," Rahul told mediapersons when asked about the development.

Earlier this year, Rahul had said that he didn't agree with the view that the Congress was involved in the 1984 riots. "I have no confusion in my mind about that. It was a tragedy, it was a painful experience. You say that the Congress party was involved in that, I don't agree with that. Certainly there was violence, certainly there was tragedy," he had said, according to NDTV.

Shortly after Indira Gandhi's assassination and the following riots, Rahul's father Rajiv Gandhi had infamously said: "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes."

A day after his sentencing in the 1984 anti-Sikh riot case, Congress leader Sajjan Kumar resigned from his party's primary membership on Tuesday, media reports said.

Kumar reportedly sent his resignation to Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

The Delhi High Court on Monday convicted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar and sentenced to jail "for the remainder of his natural life" in the 1984 anti-Sikh riot case, annulling his acquittal by a lower court earlier. 

Following the assassination of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, nationwide riots had broken out. In one incident five people were killed in the Delhi Cantonment area.