Indian court jails 21 Hindus for killing Muslims

Judge S.C. Srivastava found the 21 guilty of attempted murder and rioting. The killings took place in 2002 in Visnagar, a town in Gujarat state.More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed by Hindu mobs in the state after a train fire killed 60 Hindus who were returning from a pilgrimage.Muslims were blamed for the fire. Tens of thousands of people were left homeless as the rioters set fire to Muslim homes and businesses.The religious violence was among Indias worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.Relations between Hindus and Muslims have been largely peaceful since the bloody partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan on independence. But mistrust runs deep and there are sporadic bouts of violence.The verdict on Monday was the second in nine cases of rioting and murder pending against hundreds of Hindu hard-liners. In November last year, 31 Hindus were sentenced by the same court to life imprisonment for killing dozens of Muslims by setting a building on fire in the states Mehsana district.The courts are expected to issue verdicts in the remaining cases within a year as ordered by Indias top court. Indian courts are notorious for long delays.The state government, run by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, was accused of looking the other way when Hindus attacked Muslims after the train fire.