A Sessions Court in Gujarat’s Halol on Monday acquitted 35 Hindus who are accused in four cases in connection with the Gujarat genocide 2002.
In these cases, 52 members of violent Hindutva mob were initially charge-sheeted under various sections of the IPC and Bombay Police Act, out of these, 17 died during the pendency of the trial which went on for 20 long years, according to Live Law.
In this case, police implicated prominent Hindu persons of the concerned area including Doctors, Professors, Teachers, Businessmen, Panchayat officials and due to the uproar of pseudo-secular media and organizations, the accused persons had to unnecessarily face prolonged trial, said Additional Sessions Judge Harsh Balkrishna Trivedi.
Trivedi said: “[Gujarati Author, Kanhaiyalal Munshi] once said that if every time there is an inter-community conflict, the majority is blamed regardless of the merits of the question, the springs of traditional tolerance will dry up. In the case on hand, the police unnecessarily implicated the accused in the alleged commission of crime.”
Trivedi also observed that “the Prosecutors who are afraid of specific community lead NGOs rarely have recourse.”
The court further said that the “continued and repeated written allegations filed by persons belonging to the Muslim community to be the reason behind the prolonged probe in the case.”
Trivedi also added that “the Muslim witnesses who were alleged sufferers of riots gave widely divergent versions of the riots and thus, the prosecution failed to prove the factum of movement of the mob as mentioned in F.I.R. and in the charge sheet.”
“Several persons of the Muslim community who were said to be victims of communal violence in Delol, Derol, Kalol etc. had made oral and written representations of their grievance, before different higher authority, these are at Ex.840 and Ex.840-A etc. I have gone through their written allegations and their statements in police diary. Upon perusing those allegations keeping them next to next. I found that every time they introduced a new story,” Live Law quotes the court as saying.
The Hindu men were accused of killing Muslims Ruhul Padva, Harun Abdul Sattar Tasiya and Yusuf Ibrahim Sheikh during Gujarat genocide 2002.
