24 found guilty in Gulbarg case

More than 14 years later, a special trial court here on Thursday convicted 24 persons in the 2002 Gulbarg Society massacre case. Eleven of them were convicted of murder and the rest of arson and rioting, among other charges.

A total of 69 people, including a former parliamentarian, were killed in this post-Godhra communal riot in Gujarat.

The court dropped the conspiracy charge due to lack of evidence. The trial court, however, acquitted 36 accused, including local BJP leader Bipin Patel and former police inspector K.G. Erda, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Prominent among the convicts is Atul Vaidya, a local VHP leader, who has been found guilty of arson and rioting but not murder.

Trial court judge P.B. Desai, the fourth judge in the protracted trial that had started in 2009, will pronounce the quantum of sentence on June 6.

“We will seek the capital punishment for 11 accused because the offence is barbaric and urge the court to consider it as the rarest of the rare case; 10-12 years’ jail sentence will be sought for 13 others, who have been found guilty of lesser offences,” Special Public Prosecutor R.C. Kodekar said after the verdict was delivered.

This is the eighth of the nine cases the Supreme Court-appointed SIT had probed, and the trial was monitored by the apex court. The trial saw many twists and turns and controversies from the beginning, prompting the apex court to stay proceedings along with other most crucial cases after the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) filed a petition challenging the investigation by the Gujarat police.

In 2008, the apex court constituted an SIT to reinvestigate the nine cases, and special designated courts were set up for trial.

‘Incomplete justice’

Reacting to the verdict, Zakia Jafri, whose husband and former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was among the massacred, said she would continue to fight for justice as many accused had been acquitted.

“I am happy to see 24 have been found guilty but at the same time, 36 have been let off; so it is incomplete justice,” she said.

As soon as the judge started reading his verdict in the overcrowded courtroom, relatives of victims and acquitted erupted in celebrations.

The court complex was turned into a fortress due to heavy police deployment. Hundreds of relatives of victims and accused had gathered to hear the verdict.

The court completed the trial in September 2015 but was restrained by the apex court from pronouncing its verdict. Subsequently, the apex court directed the trial court to pass the verdict by May 31.

A total of 338 witnesses were examined by the court during the trial, which began almost seven years after the gruesome massacre was carried out.