The Indian Express file photo.
Godhra: For want of evidence, 26 persons accused of gang rape and murder during the 2002 Gujarat communal riots were acquitted by a court here. The acquitted were accused the criminal offences against a dozen members of a minority community in separate incidents in Gujarat's Kalol, PTI reported.
There were 39 people accused in the case, but 13 died during its pendency, and the trial against them was abated.
Additional sessions judge of Halol in Panchmahal district, Leelabhai Chudasama, acquitted the 26 from charges of murder, gangrape and rioting for want of evidence.
The court said, "As many as 13 out of a total of 39 accused in the case had died during the pendency of the trial."
According to an FIR lodged on March 2, 2002, the accused persons were part of a mob that unleashed violence on March 1, during communal riots, that year after the train burning incident in Godhra on February 27.
Though the prosecution examined 190 witnesses and 334 documentary evidence to support its argument, the court found that there were contradictions in the witnesses' submissions, and they did not support the prosecution's arguments.
A mob of more than 2,000 people from two different communities clashed with sharp weapons and inflammable objects in Gandhinagar district's Kalol.
They destroyed stops and set them on fire. A man who was injured in police firing was brunt alive while being rushed to the hospital. The mob killed another man who was coming out of a mosque. They burnt his body inside the mosque.
In another incident, 38 people who were fleeing Delol village to find shelter in Kalol were attacked. Eleven of them were burnt alive, while a woman was gang raped when she, along with others, were trying to escape.