NEW DELHI, July 31: India’s top human rights body on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to order a retrial of 21 Hindus acquitted over the killing of 12 Muslims in last year’s Gujarat riots after a key witness said she was intimidated by politicians.

The National Human Rights Commission, which is sponsored by the government but has few concrete powers, urged the court to hold a new trial outside the riot-scarred western state of Gujarat.

In its petition, the rights watchdog said it was “deeply concerned about the damage to the credibility of the criminal justice delivery system.”

In one of the bloodiest incidents during India’s worst communal bloodletting in a decade, a group of Hindu men allegedly attacked the Best Bakery on March 1, 2002 with petrol bombs and knives, burning to death 12 Muslims.

Twenty-one men charged with the attack were acquitted on June 27 after 35 witnesses retracted statements.

A key witness, 19-year-old Muslim Zaheera Sheikh, approached the National Human Rights Commission about holding a new trial out of Gujarat, possibly in Bombay, as she said she was could not tell the truth at the hearing in Gujarat.

Sheikh said she lied in court after death threats by local leaders of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist BJP party, which rules Gujarat.—AFP