Godhra
sentencing based on dubious evidence: Swami Agnivesh
Tuesday March 01, 2011 04:54:09 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi: Noted civil rights activist Swami Agnivesh Tuesday said the sentencing of 11 people to the gallows
and 20 others to life imprisonment in the Godhra train-burning
incident was a "hollow case based on dubious evidence".
"The whole verdict appears to be weak as it is based on dubious
evidence of a single person," Agnivesh told IANS here.
He recalled that the media had exposed the loopholes in the Godhra
conspiracy theory.
"The verdict is a very weak, hollow one. It will come up for
appeal in the higher court. I am sure the truth will come out at
last," Agnivesh added.
According to the rights activist, the charge that Muslim
conspirators collaborated with a Hindu vendor was unconvincing.
The judge, he said, had "based the judgment on the basis of
dubious evidence of a single person".
A special court in Ahmedabad Tuesday sent to the gallows 11 people
and gave life imprisonment to 20 others for the February 2002
burning of a train coach in Gujarat's Godhra town, in which 59
people were killed, triggering a communal frenzy that claimed an
estimated 1,000 lives in the state.
The 31 people were convicted Feb 22 and held guilty of conspiring
and setting on fire S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express near the
Godhra railway station Feb 27, 2002. The train, carrying many
radical Hindu activists, was on its way back from Uttar Pradesh's
temple town Ayodhya.
The court had acquitted 63 others, including alleged mastermind
Maulvi Saeed Umarji.
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