AHMEDABAD
An Indian court upholds appeals by 14 Hindus, who were convicted over the slaughter of 33 Muslims in the worst religious unrest in India since independence, on Tuesday.
The victims had packed into a small house seeking refuge during a wave of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, triggered by a train fire in which Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive.
The mob burnt the house, killing 28 people on the spot, while five died of their injuries.
The court in Gujarat upheld the convictions of another 17 people sentenced to life in prison in the original 2011 trial for their role in the killings in the village of Sardarpura.
“Out of the 14 acquitted, the bench granted benefit of doubt to 11, while it said it did not find evidence against three others,” said defence lawyer N L Jain after the hearing.
All 31 men were originally handed life sentences for murder, arson and other charges in the Sardarpura case.
Gujarat’s Hindu nationalist government was accused of tacit support of attacks; one of the survivors of the Sardarpura carnage said, “we were shouting, pleading and begging. But no one came to our help, not even the police”
More than 100 people have been convicted over the riots, which left more than 1,000 people dead in some of India’s worst inter-faith violence since 1947.
Muslims were blamed for the train fire and Hindu mobs hungry for revenge rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was the state’s chief minister at the time, was accused of turning a blind eye to the violence. He was cleared of any wrongdoing in 2012 by a Supreme Court-ordered investigation.
Earlier this year, a court jailed 11 Hindus for life over the massacre of dozens of Muslims hacked and burnt to death in a residential complex in the city of Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
The massacre at the Gulbarg Society housing complex was one of deadliest in the week-long violence.
