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This is an archive article published on June 16, 2023
Gujarat court acquits 35 in four post-Godhra riots cases of 2002
Fifty-two people had been chargesheeted in the four cases of riots in which three people were killed.
Fifty-two people had been chargesheeted in the four cases of the 2002 riots in which three people were killed. (File photo)
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Gujarat court acquits 35 in four post-Godhra riots cases of 2002
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A sessions court in Halol in Panchmahal district has acquitted all 35 surviving accused in four post-Godhra riot cases in 2002 in which three persons were killed. They were acquitted for “lack of evidence” as witnesses turned hostile during the course of trial.
In its order of June 12, which was made available on June 15, the court of additional sessions judge Harsh Trivedi also slammed “pseudo-secular media and politicians” for claiming that the riots were planned.
Halol Additional Sessions Judge Harsh Trivedi concluded that the prosecution had failed to prove beyond doubt that the accused were involved in the four cases of riots in which Ruhul Padva, Harun Abdul Sattar Tasiya and Yusuf Ibrahim Sheikh were allegedly “killed by inflicting deadly weapons and then burning them, causing disappearance of evidence of offence” at Derol railway station on February 28, 2002, a day after the Sabarmati Express train burning incident at Godhra.
The court held that all the 35 accused have been acquitted as “there is no evidence that the accused persons committed the offences under the sections (they were booked for)”. In all, 52 persons were chargesheeted in the cases registered at Kalol police station in 2002. Seventeen of them died during the pendency of trial that went on for over 20 years.
The court also noted that the victims had been inconsistent in their statements recorded before various authorities. “In the case in hand, the prosecution witnesses, particularly the Muslim witnesses who are alleged sufferers of the riots, have given widely divergent versions of the riots… In case of communal riots, a large number of persons is generally involved and the evidence is often entirely of a partisan character. There is, moreover, a great danger of innocent persons being implicated along with the guilty, owing to the tendency of the parties in such cases to try to implicate falsely as many of their enemies as they can. Therefore, the possibility of innocent persons being falsely implicated should always be borne in mind by the judge,” said the court.
The court observed that the police witnesses in the cases were “unreliable” as “none of them has identified miscreants, even during the investigation and during the trial”.
Citing prominent Gujarati author and Congress leader, Kanhaiyalal Munshi, the court said, “Kanhaiyalal Munshi once said ‘If every time there is inter-communal conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of merits of the question… In the case in hand, the police has unnecessarily implicated the accused in the alleged commission of the crime. Police implicated prominent Hindu persons of the area — doctor, professor, teacher, businessmen, panchayat official, etc — who hail from the Hindu community. Due to the uproar of pseudo-secular media and organisations, the accused persons have unnecessarily to face prolonged trial,”
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The court also observed that due to “continued & repeated written allegations by persons from the Muslim community”, the trial was prolonged such that “first and the last IO died before they can be called as witnesses”.
The accused were booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including for unlawful assembly, rioting and dacoity, among others as well as under Section 135 of the Bombay Police Act.
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