An Indian court in Gujarat’s Panchmahal district has acquitted all 26 accused of gang rape and murder of over a dozen Muslims in separate incidents in Kalol during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
The court freed the accused over lack of evidence in the 20-year-old case. The case was heard on Friday by the additional sessions judge of Halol in Panchmahal district, Leelabhai Chudasama. It was reported that of the 39 accused, 23 had died while the case was pending, and the trial against them was stopped. The prosecution had presented the court with 190 witnesses and 334 documentaries as evidence to support their argument, but the court found contradictions in the witnesses’ accounts.
An FIR was filed against the defendants at Kalol Police Station on March 2, 2002, a day after a mob went on a rampage during the communal riots that broke out in Gujarat on March 1, 2002. The mob had damaged shops, set them on fire, and attacked and killed people.
During the violence, a man who had been injured in police firing was burnt alive, while another man coming out of a mosque was attacked and killed, and his body was burnt inside the holy building.
In another incident, 11 out of 38 people fleeing Delol village and traveling to Kalol were burnt alive, and a woman was gang-raped while trying to escape. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when the state was struck by riots that killed more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.
