23 years after Godhra train fire, 3 persons charged as minors convicted, sent to remand home 

Over two decades after the Godhra train burning incident, a Juvenile Justice Board in Gujarat's Panchmahal district on Tuesday sentenced three individuals, who were minors at that time, to a three-year stay in a remand home for their involvement in the arson that triggered communal riots.

Advertisement

JJB Chairman KS Modi at Godhra sent the trio, now majors, to a remand home for three years and also slapped a fine of Rs 10,000 each on them.

The board acquitted two others charged in the case, who were also underage at the time of the horrific incident.

The JJB also suspended their sentence for 30 days to allow the convicts to appeal against the order in a higher court, their lawyer Salman Charkha said.

As per the prosecution, the three accused were part of the mob that hurled stones and set on fire the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express coming from Ayodhya after hatching a conspiracy.

They were booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to murder, criminal conspiracy, attempt to murder, voluntarily causing hurt, etc.

Two others were acquitted for want of evidence.

On February 27, 2002, as many as 59 'kar sevaks' (people who volunteer their services for free to a religious cause) returning from Ayodhya were killed when the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was set on fire by a mob near Godhra station.

The train carnage triggered widespread communal riots in the state in which over 1,000 people, most of them belonging to a minority community, were killed.

Separate chargesheets were filed against six juveniles named as accused in the case. All chargesheets were consolidated and heard together, Charkha said.

One of the six accused died during the pendency of the case before the board.

A Godhra court had in 2011 convicted 31 accused in the case and acquitted 63 others. Eleven of the convicts were sentenced to death, while 20 were handed life imprisonment by the trial court.

Later, the Gujarat High Court upheld the trial court ruling to convict the 31 accused, but commuted the death sentence of the 11 to life imprisonment.