AHMEDABAD: The Lunavada municipality has filed a police complaint on Monday against Raees Khan and 10 others, mostly relatives of the "missing" communal riot victims, for "illegal digging" at a burial ground which the State Government authorities claimed was an "official grave."

Eight skulls were recovered from a grave last week which was dug up by Mr. Khan, the Ahmedabad-based supporter of Teesta Setalvad, the convener of the Citizens for Justice and Peace, and relatives of some of the "missing persons."

The skulls, they said, were that of the victims of the Pandarvada riots, in which 21 persons were still believed to be "missing." The police, however, had earlier dismissed the case, claiming the skulls were of those whose deaths were taken into account, post-mortems performed and were "officially buried."

On a petition filed by Amina Bibi, the mother of one of the victims, the Gujarat High Court on behalf of the Citizens for Justice and Peace, has ordered DNA testing of the skulls at the Hyderabad forensic science laboratory under the supervision of the CBI. The single judge bench of justice C. K. Buch had ordered State Government representatives and relatives of the victims to be present during the collection of bones from the grave for sending for DNA testing.

Mr. Khan said the case filed by the Lunavada municipality was aimed at delaying the process under the court order so that he and other victims' relatives would not be present when the bones were collected, as ordered by the High Court.

He claimed that his non government organisation was only following information available from all sources about the missing persons in the communal riots. They dug up the grave on being informed by a Lunavada municipality sweeper that some bodies of the victims of the Pandarvada riots were "dumped" at a particular spot after being massacred during the 2002 riots.

The NGO had disputed the police theory of it being an "official mass burial," saying that in any such burial bodies were placed beside one another and not piled in a random fashion.

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