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Indian Court convicts 31, acquits 63 in Godhra train carnage

Dunya News

A special fast-track court in India's western Gujarat state on Tuesday upheld the conviction of 31 persons while acquitting 63 others in the case of torching of the Sabarmati Express coach at Godhra in 2002 that killed 59 passengers, mostly Hindu pilgrims. The ruling on the fate of the 94 accused came after nine years in Ahmedabad.

Additional Sessions Judge P. R. Patel pronounced the judgment under the sections 120(B) (criminal conspiracy) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal code inside the Sabarmati Jail premises.Public Prosecutor J. M. Panchal said the court upheld that it was a well-planned conspiracy. In the case of the prosecution, the charge-sheet is that a well planned conspiracy was hatched. Petrol was brought and thereafter train was made to stop. Thereafter gas tube was cut, and the pouring of petrol (was done) in huge quantity, and thereafter setting it on fire so far as the coach S-6 was concerned, said Panchal. Panchal further said that the court would pronounce the quantum of sentence on Friday (February 25).On 25th there will be a hearing on the point of sentence. And thereafter the court will give its verdict regarding the (quantum of) sentence, he said. However, he said the prime accused and conspirator in the case, Maulvi Hussain Umar, has been acquitted.The deadly train fire in Godhra on February 27, 2002, killed 59 passengers, most of them Hindu pilgrims, and triggered riots in the Hindu-dominated state. Mobs of Muslim men were blamed for starting the fire in retaliation for the destruction of a mosque by Hindu extremists.More than 2,500 people, most of them Muslims, were burned and hacked to death in a month of retaliatory violence in Gujarat in 2002, according to human rights groups. Officials put the death toll at about 1,000.
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