NEW DELHI, June 30: Indian newspapers on Monday joined several political parties in slamming the acquittal of 21 Hindus accused of burning a bakery with 12 Muslims inside during sectarian riots in Gujarat state last year.

In an editorial titled “Justice blindfolded”, the Hindustan Times said the verdict, given on Friday, marked a “black day” for the Indian justice system.

Judge J.U. Mahida ruled there was insufficient evidence for convictions after 35 of 60 witnesses retracted their statements in court. Some witnesses even claimed that the accused had saved their lives during the violence.

“What seems to have happened is that the police have failed to protect the witnesses” who have been coerced by Hindu activists to refrain from giving evidence, the paper said.

“As a result, a majority of them turned hostile retracting their earlier statements and even saying that their attackers were really their protectors,” it said.

“What these developments underline is a diabolical conspiracy to subvert the judicial system.”

The paper accused Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a Hindu hardliner, of finding a “foolproof way of frustrating any legal attempt to unearth the truth about the riots”.

The police were restrained by the Modi administration from responding to distress calls during the killings and participated in intimidating the victims, the paper said.

The Indian Express said in an editorial that “the tidy acquittal of the accused... is a betrayal of faith. It must sound a nationwide alarm...

“It must be asked whether it was because the witnesses were silenced by fear and coercion. Or due to the deliberately botched investigation that... is a common feature of all riot cases,” the paper said.

The Times of India, in an editorial titled “Speedy Injustice”, said “the verdict implies that the police failed — quite deliberately — to apprehend those actually involved in carrying out the horrific outrage”.

The paper said cynics would argue that this was no different from verdicts handed out in riot cases in the past.

“Since most cases of communal violence are politically engineered, shielding the guilty is very much an accepted part of the post-riot ‘healing’ process. For all that, the Gujarat case cannot be ignored,” the paper warned.

Former junior foreign minister Omar Abdullah in a statement said he was deeply anguished by the verdict.—AFP