A Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court will challenge the recent acquittal of all 67 accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam riot case in the Gujarat High Court, reports said.

According to reports quoting sources in the SIT, the team will file a plea in Gujarat High Court against the lower court’s order in the Naroda Gam case, adding that the final call will be taken after studying the SIT court’s judgement which is still awaited.

On April 20, a special court of S K Baxi in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, special judge for Special Investigation Team cases, cleared all 67 accused—including former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, ex-Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi, and former VHP leader Jaydeep Patel —in the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Gam area in which eleven Muslims were killed by rioters.

The Naroda Gam Massacre was one of the nine major 2002 communal riots cases investigated by the SC-appointed SIT and heard by special courts.

The SIT, which took over the probe from the Gujarat Police in 2008, arrested more than 30 accused in the case.

A total of 86 accused were named in the FIR pertaining to the Naroda Gam massacre. While 18 accused died during the period of the trial, one was discharged by the court earlier under section 169 of the CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) citing insufficient evidence against him.

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The Naroda Gam massacre

On February 28, 2002, riots erupted in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Gam area during a shutdown called to protest the burning of the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express by a mob near Godhra station a day earlier in which 58 passengers, mostly karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were charred to death.

As per official numbers, as many as 11 Muslims were killed by rioters in Naroda Gam following which the 86 accused were booked under Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), and 153 (provocation for riots), among others.

Current Union Home Minister and then BJP chief, Amit Shah, had appeared in the trial court as a defence witness for Maya Kodnani.

The former Gujarat minister had requested the court to summon Shah to in a bid to prove her alibi that she was present in the Gujarat Assembly and later at Ahmedabad’s Sola Civil Hospital, and not at Naroda Gam, where the massacre took place.

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