11 sentenced to death in Godra train burning case

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11 sentenced to death in Godra train burning case

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Ahmedabad: The special court that tried the sensational Godra train burning case has sentenced eleven persons to death. The court has also sentenced 20 others to life imprisonment. Thirty one accused were earlier acquitted. 

Information added from Wikipedia files: The heinous incident occurred in 2002, A sleeper coach on a passenger train was burned by Islamic fundamentalists in Godhra, Gujarat, India. 59 passengers died, all of them Hindu pilgrims coming from Ayodhya, and the event triggered widespread violence in Gujarat, resulting in the deaths of about 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus. In the very first police FIR (First Information Report), the incident was viewed as unplanned mob fury. However, a Special Investigating Team (SIT) of the Gujarat police argued that the coach was set on fire as a planned act by a Muslim group, who were said to have stockpiled 140 liters of petrol from the day before for the purpose of killing the kar sevaks (servants of God). 

A commission set up by the Railways ministry reported in 2005 that the fire was almost certainly an accident, but the Gujarat High Court ruled formation of this enquiry commission by Railways as "illegal" and "unconstitutional". As of now all its probe results stand invalid. Another judicial committee, investigating charges under the Prevention of Terrorist Activities Act, opined in 2005 that the actions of the Muslim mob were most likely spontaneous and not planned. A commission set up by the Gujarat government upheld in 2008 the original SIT claims that it was a conspiracy. In February 2011, the court agreed that the incident was a planned conspiracy, and convicted 31 people of burning the train.