The court upheld the conviction of 20, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. So now, all the 31 convicts get life term in prison.

The Gujarat High Court on Monday commuted the death sentence awarded to 11 persons in the 2002 Godhara train burning case to life imprisonment.

It also upheld the life imprisonment awarded to 20 other convicts while endorsing the acquittal of 63 other accused.

In March 2011, the special trial court had convicted 31 persons, of whom 11 were sentenced to death and the remaining 20 awarded life in prison.

On Monday, more than two years after the hearing was completed in a set of appeals filed by the convicts as well as the prosecution challenging the trial court order, the High Court’s division bench of Justices A.S. Dave and G.R. Udhwani pronounced the verdict.

Acquittals unchanged

The court refused to alter the acquittal of 63 accused including late Maulana Umarji, who was dubbed by the Gujarat police and the Special Investigation Team (SIT) as the mastermind of the train burning case. Maulana Umarji died in 2013.

The High Court rejected the appeals filed by the SIT against the acquittal of 63 people, and also its appeals seeking enhancement of sentences. The court also rejected the appeals against conviction.

The Bench relied on the testimonies of injured witnesses, passengers, railway employees, Railway Protection Force personnel, two policemen from Godhra, the Gujarat railway police, experts from forensic laboratories and also confessional statements.

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Compensation ordered

The Bench expressed regret at the inordinate delay of over two years before reading out the operative part of the verdict. The court held that that the State government had failed in discharging its duty in maintaining law and order during the incident and directed it to pay compensation of ₹10 lakh each to the families of 59 persons killed in the train fire.

The Bench said the trial court judgment did not address this aspect and compensation to those who suffered injuries should be decided by the government.

Trial court judge P.R. Patel, now posted as Registrar in the High Court, had held the case as the “rarest of rare” and accepted the findings of the Supreme Court-appointed SIT, which probed the case.

The SIT had found that the attack on the train was a “pre-planned conspiracy” to target Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya.

It may be noted that the State government-appointed inquiry commission, headed by Justice Nanavati, also concluded that the “incident was a result of pre-planned conspiracy” and not an accident.

The inquiry commission was tasked with probing the train fire and the communal riots that followed in which more than 1,200 people, a majority of them from the minority community, were killed in violence that lasted two months.