Godhra case: 11 get death, 20 to serve life term

IANS

Ahmedabad Tuesday, Mar 1, 2011

A special court on Tuesday awarded the death penalty to 11 persons convicted for the 2002 Godhra carnage. Twenty other convicts were sentenced to life in prison.

Last week, the court accepted the prosecution’s contention that a conspiracy was hatched to set ablaze coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, which killed 59 people. The court had held 31 persons guilty for the incident.

Special public prosecutor JM Panchal, who sought death for all the convicts, argued that the Godhra incident was not comparable to any other criminal case in history. Thus, he argued, it fit into the ‘rarest of the rare’ category specified by the apex court for capital punishment.

Finer details like grounds on which punishment was determined for each convict are not clear yet. “The court has delivered its verdict and its observation will only be known after the full text of the judgment is made available to the accused on Thursday,” Panchal said.