MUMBAI, Feb 24: Nine Hindus were on Friday convicted of killing 14 people in an arson attack on a bakery during anti-Muslim riots in India’s western Gujarat state in 2002.
All nine were sentenced to life in prison by Judge Abhay Tipsay after being found guilty of setting fire to the Muslim-run Best Bakery in Gujarat’s Baroda town.
Eight other people were acquitted while four accused are still on the run.
The Best Bakery incident came amid a wave of bloody reprisals for the deaths of 59 Hindus in a train coach allegedly torched by Muslims in February 2002.
Witnesses testified that hundreds of Hindus came to the bakery carrying swords and petrol bombs and torched the ground floor of the owner’s house next door. The fire quickly spread to the adjoining bakery, trapping and killing those working inside.
The prosecutions’s main witness, Zaheera Sheikh, told an earlier trial in Gujarat that, while hiding on the roof of a neighbouring building, she saw the attack and could identify those responsible.
The Supreme Court consequently ordered that the case move from Gujarat to Mumbai, for a retrial because of concerns of witness intimidation.
Sheikh, who was 17 at the time of the killings, and four members of her family were convicted of perjury and will be sentenced at a later date, said special prosecutor Manjula Rao outside the court.
An Internet news portal claimed some Hindu politicians had paid Sheikh to change her testimony.—AFP
