Representational photo showing a gavel.
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Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court recently upheld the acquittal of six accused in the killing of three British nationals during the 2002 post-Godhra riots. The court held that there was no reason to interfere with the judgement passed by the special designated court in 2015 on the ground of lack of sufficient evidence.
"...the Court does not find any reason to interfere with the impugned judgment and order of acquittal passed by the Principal District and Sessions Judge (Specially Designated Court), Sabarkantha at Himmatnagar in Sessions Case No 70 of 2002. The appeal therefore deserves to be and is hereby dismissed," ordered a division bench of justices A Y Kogje and Samir Dave.
The court held that the case was not based on any independent eyewitnesses but an anonymous fax message which had originally named ten suspects. "...The initiation of the investigation is also based on an anonymous fax message and not on the basis of the evidence of any independent eyewitness," the bench observed.
It added that the anonymous fax letter was addressed to the British High Commission, which had the names of the suspects.
The British nationals Saeed Dawood, Shakeel Dawood and Mohammed Aswat were killed by a mob on National Highway-8 on February 28, 2002 near Prantij in Sabarkantha district while they were returning to their village Lajpur, Navsari in south Gujarat after visiting Agra and Jaipur.
Three of them were killed on the spot while the dead body of the fourth was never found. The incident happened a day after 59 kar sevaks were killed at Godhra railway station which sparked the widespread riots.
In 2015, a special court acquitted all the six accused on the ground that there was not enough evidence. This was one of the nine riot cases probed by the Supreme Court appointed-Special Investigation Team (SIT). SIT had named six accused including, Mitha Patel, Chandu alias Prahlad Patel, Ramesh Patel, Manoj Patel, Rajesh Patel and Kalabhai Patel.
During the trial, three witnesses turned hostile and the court refused to believe the testimony of Imran Dawood, who survived and lodged the complaint. The SIT didn't challenge the judgement of the lower court but Dawood.