Fourteen years after the massacre of 69 people, including ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, a special trial court here, on Thursday, convicted 24 accused and held 36 others as not-guilty due to “lack of evidence”.

While pronouncing this, Sessions Judge P.B. Desai, while rejecting the prosecution’s conspiracy charge, said the quantum of sentence will be announced on June 6 along with a detailed judgment. Those convicted included VHP leader Atul Vaidya.

On February 28, 2002, some miscreants set on fire a second-class sleeper coach of Sabarmati Express at Godhra, in which 59 passengers and pilgrims were roasted alive. As a reaction, communal riots spread across many cities and an armed mob attacked Gulbarg Housing Society in Ahmedabad.

In this case, the mob set on fire some houses in the society, including that of Jafri, where many had taken shelter. Sixty-nine people from a minority community died in the gruesome incident. Charred bodies of 39 people were recovered from the place, while 30 others were declared dead by the Special Investigation Team as there was no trace of them 12 years after the incident.

Of the 24 people convicted, the court found 11 persons guilty of murder under Section 302 of the IPC and 13 others guilty of lesser crimes. All the 60 accused were present in the court as their family members crowded the court compound.

The court had heard the case on a day-to-day basis on the instructions of the Supreme Court which, on February 22, 2016, directed the Sessions Court to pronounce its ruling within three months.

The Gulbarg Society case was one of the nine major cases of the 2002 Gujarat violence which were probed by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by former CBI Director RK Raghavan. Nearly 1,000 people died in the riots, including some 700 in firing by the police to control riots.

The SIT had named 69 accused in the case, of whom nine have been in jail for the last 14 years, while the remaining were out on bail.

Those acquitted included a local BJP municipal councillor Bipin Patel and former police inspector KG Erda, whose names were added later as accused in the case by the SIT.

Reacting to the ruling, Zakia Jafri, wife of Jafri, said she would continue to fight for justice as many accused have been acquitted by the trial court.

As soon as the judge started reading his verdict in the overcrowded courtroom, relatives of victims and those acquitted erupted in celebrations. The court premises was turned into a fortress with heavy police deployment in view of the sensitivity of the case.

The court, which had completed trial in September 2015, was restrained by the Supreme Court from pronouncing its verdict and was later directed to pass the ruling within three months.

Altogether 338 witnesses were examined by the court during the trial that began in 2009, almost seven years after the gruesome massacre was carried out.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW