A court in Halol in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district acquitted 22 Hindus accused of murder and rioting in the post-Godhra 2002 riots on Tuesday, 18 years after the case was filed. The acquitted persons included eight accused who died during the pendency of the proceedings, therefore 14 living accused have been acquitted in the case. They were accused of killing 17 Muslims in Delol village of the district, but the court acquitted them as there was no evidence against them, saying that the prosecution failed to prove its case.
The 14 acquitted persons have been identified as Mukesh Bharvad, Killol Jani, Ashokbhai Patel, Niravkumar Patel, Yogeshkumar Patel, Dilipsinh Gohil, Dilipkumar Bhatt, Nasibdar Rathod, Alkeshkumar Vyas, Narendrakumar Kachhiya, Jinabhai Rathod, Akshaykumar Shah, Kiritbhai Joshi and Sureshbhai Patel.
Additional Sessions Judge Harsh Balkrishna Trivedi ruled that the prosecution had failed to show its case, resulting in their release, and also cited the law of corpus delicti, a body of the crime, noting that it is a “general norm not to convict anybody unless Corpus delicti can be established.” The concept of corpus delicti means that it must be proved that a crime has taken place before anyone can be convicted for it. Therefore, here the court found that there was no evidence that the 17 victims were massacred during the Gujarat riots.
“In case on hand, on 7/1/2004 when F.S.L. expert reported ‘No DNA profiling results would be obtained upon completely charred bone pieces’ (alleged to have been of the missing persons) then automatically rule of Corpus delicti was required to be considered,” the Court said.
With no remains of the victims retrieved from the believed location of the crime, the court ruled that the prosecution could not substantiate the suspected location of the crime. The court also noted that the prosecution failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt the appearance of the accused at the scene of the crime or their specific role in the crime, that the alleged weapons used in the crime were not recovered from the suspect, and that no inflammable material was found at the suspicious site of crime.
The case relates to the 2002 Gujarat riots after around 59 Hindus travelling in Sabarmati Express were burnt alive in a single incident at Godhara. The prosecution claimed that the accused persons had killed around 17 persons on 28 February 2002 and had burnt their bodies to destroy the evidence near Delol village, around 30 km from Godhra.
A chargesheet in the case was filed in the year 2004, but the investigating authorities did not recover any weapon from the accused. Police had recovered some bones but they were charred to such an extent that DNA tests could not be done on them to identify the victims.
As many as 84 witnesses were examined during the trial before the Court on Tuesday acquitted all the Hindus accused of murder and rioting in the post-Godhra 2002 riots.