Thirty-five individuals were exonerated by a sessions court in Halol town, Panchmahal district, in relation to four separate riot incidents during the Gujarat riots in 2002, in which three people were killed. The trial concerned violence that occurred in the Kalol town, Delol village, and Derol Station areas on February 28, 2002, under the jurisdiction of the Kalol police station, following the burning of the Sabarmati Express Train the day before.
The police were reportedly notified of three missing people when they visited the relief camps that had been established in the wake of the instance. Three missing people named Yusuf Ibrahim Sheikh, Harun Abdul Sattar Tasiya and Ruhul Amin Padva from the minority community were found dead a few days later.
Initially, the First Information Report (FIR) listed assault, rioting, arson, and stone-pelting. However, an allegation of murder was added as a result of additional assertions made by the witnesses. Fifty-two people had been charge-sheeted out of which seventeen died during the trial that went on for over 20 years.
The court acquitted the accused due to a “lack of evidence” as witnesses turned hostile during the course of the trial. The prosecution was found to have failed to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that they were involved in the four riot instances, according to the judgement rendered by Halol Additional Sessions Judge Harsh Trivedi on June 12. The court ruled that none of them could be found guilty of engaging in rioting and that the former also failed to establish the recovery and seizure of any weapons.
The prosecution claimed that they were “killed by inflicting deadly weapons and then burning them, causing disappearance of evidence of offence” during an incident on February 28, 2002, at the Derol railway station, but the court countered that the victims’ statements submitted to various authorities were contradictory.
The judgment also criticised the pseudo-secular lobby. “Peace-loving Gujarati people were shocked and anguished by this incident. We have seen that then pseudo-secular media and politicians rubbed salt into the wound of anguished people. Reports say that sixteen of Gujarat’s twenty-four districts were engulfed in communal rioting post-Godhra carnage. Nowhere mobs were less than 2000-3000 or more. Often they were more than 5,000-10,000 strong.”
It added, “There were spontaneous riots in Gujarat. They were not planned ones, as described by pseudo-secular persons. Due to the uproar of pseudo-secular media and organizations, the accused persons have unnecessarily faced prolonged trial.”
The court stated, “In the case on hand the prosecution witnesses, particularly, Muslim witnesses who are alleged sufferers of riots have given widely divergent versions of the riots.” A total of 130 witnesses were examined during the trial. It mentioned that during communal riots, a significant number of people are usually involved and the evidence is frequently wholly partisan.
“In cases of communal riots cases the police usually prosecute members of both the community. But it is for the court to ascertain in such cases, which of the two versions is correct and the court can not shirk this duty on the ground that the police did not ascertain which of the stories was true,” it remarked.
It pointed out, “There is moreover, great danger of innocent persons being implicated along with the guilty, owing to the tendency of the parties in such cases to try to implicate falsely as many of their enemies as they can. Therefore, the possibility of innocent persons being falsely implicated should always be borne in mind by the judge.”
The court proclaimed that none of the police witnesses in the instances had “identified miscreants, even during the investigation and during the trial,” making them “unreliable.” It quoted famed Gujarati author and Congress politician Kanhaiyalal Munshi and voiced, “If every time there is inter-communal conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of merits of the question, the spring of traditional tolerance will dry up.”
“In the case on hand, the police have unnecessarily implicated the accused in the alleged commission of the crime. Police implicated prominent Hindu persons in the area, doctors, professors, teachers, businessmen, panchayat officials etc., who hail from the Hindu community,” it observed.
The court noted that the trial was drawn out to the point where “the first and last IO (investigating officer) died before they could be called as witnesses” as a result of the “continued and repeated written assertions from members of the Muslim community.” It declared that all of the surviving defendants had been cleared because “there is no evidence that the accused persons committed the offences under the sections (they were booked for)”.
They were indicted under sections 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting with deadly weapon), 149 (offence committed by a member of an unlawful assembly for the prosecution of the common object), 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence), 395 (dacoity), 435 (mischief by fire), 436 (mischief by fire or explosive substance with intent to destroy house) of the India Penal Court (IPC).
More sections of the IPC including 427 (mischief to cause loss or damage of Rs 50 or more), 333 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt to deter public servant from his duty), 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class), 153(A) (offence in any place of worship or in any assembly engaged in the performance of religious worship or religious ceremonies), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 504 (insulting someone intentionally to provoke them) and 502 (sells or offers for sale any printed or engraved substance containing defamatory matter), as well as Section 135 of the Bombay Police Act, was invoked against them.
