The shoe-gate checked inside a Delhi courtroom on Tuesday afternoon after an irate protester hurled one at the judge at Karkardooma court in east Delhi after he acquitted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar of all charges in a 1984 anti-Sikh riots case.

For many, and with due apologies to the court, is it a case of justice not only delayed but denied even?

In May 2010, the trial court had framed charges against Kumar and the five others under IPC sections 302 (murder), 395 (dacoity), 427 (mischief to cause damage to property), 153-A (promoting enmity between different communities), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and other provisions.

Kumar and the other five — Balwan Khokkar, Kishan Khokkar, Mahender Yadav, Girdhari Lal and Captain Bhagmal — were facing trial for allegedly conspiring and instigating a mob to attack, and even kill people from the Sikh community in Delhi Cantonment area following then prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984.

District judge JR Aryan convicted all the other five accused in the case relating to the killing of five persons, agencies reported. While Kishan Khokkar and Mahender Yadav have been convicted of rioting, Bhagmal, Balwan Khokkar and Giridhari Lal were convicted of murder.

While there have been many accounts of several ‘young Turks’ of the Congress at the time leading mobs in many areas of the capital, inciting people to attack members of the Sikh community, how plausible is it that in a case in which five people were killed, and the former Congress MP was made an accomplice in 2005 on a recommendation by the justice Nanavati commission, that Kumar’s role amounted to zilch?

Did he do nothing at all to be acquitted on all counts?

If Kumar was the main accused in this particular case and he did nothing, what did the others do? Who led and incited them?

If Captain Bhagmal, Balwan Khokkar and Giridhari Lal killed the five persons, and Kishan Khokkar and Mahender Yadav only sparked off riots, did they act/react on their own, spontaneously?

Finally, how strong is the lack of evidence as an alibi for a person to be acquitted of all charges?

For Jagdish Kaur, the petitioner in the case, the three witnesses who had testified that Kumar was present at the riots that day, and Karnail Singh, who allegedly hurled the shoe at judge Aryan, it could be a question of life and death. Literally, for the witnesses were reportedly waiting to meet the judge — long after the case wound up, the verdict delivered and Sajjan Kumar quietly slipped off the prying eyes of the media — to seek the death penalty for themselves.