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Life-term for 12 in post-Godhra violence case

By Our Special Correspondent

AHMEDABAD Nov. 25 . In the first-ever conviction in communal riot-related cases in Gujarat, the Nadiad district sessions judge today sentenced 12 of the accused in the Ghodasar carnage to life imprisonment and the remaining three to two years' rigorous imprisonment.

The remaining 48 of the 63 accused tried in the case were acquitted for want of adequate evidence to prove their involvement in the communal carnage in which 14 Muslims were killed by a mob in Ghodasar village in Mehmadabad taluk of Kaira district in central Gujarat on March 3 last year.

Delivering the judgment, the district sessions judge, C.K. Rane, gave permission to counsel for those sentenced to appeal against the sentence in higher courts.

All the 12 accused who were found guilty of murder charges under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code were sentenced to life imprisonment while the three found guilty of unlawful assembly and rioting have been handed down two years' rigorous imprisonment. The court had pronounced the judgment on Monday but reserved the ruling on the quantum of punishment for today.

It was the first case of sentence in the State in a riot-related case after the fiasco in the Best Bakery and some other riot cases in which all the accused were acquitted as the witnesses turned hostile, apparently under pressure from various lobbies trying to protect the Hindus involved in the massacre of Muslims in the post-Godhra communal riots.

Several relatives of the riot victims and witnesses in the Ghodasar case said their faith in the judicial system in the State had been re-established after the Nadiad court's judgment which was shattered after the Vadodara fast track court's judgment in the Best Bakery case.

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