- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
A COURT in the western Indian state of Gujarat on Tuesday (8) convicted 49 people in connection with the 2008 terror attack in the city of Ahmedabad in the state that left several dead and many injured.
The attack, according to the perpetrators, was retaliation against the deadly communal violence of 2002.
The attack witnessed a series of bombings across the city in which 56 people were killed and more than 200 injured in Gujarat’s commercial hub.
A terror outfit called the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks and said they were carried out as a revenge against the 2002 riots in Gujarat that left several from the minority Muslim community dead.
Current Indian prime minister Narendra Modi was the chief minister of Gujarat when the riots took place. He was accused of turning a blind eye to the violence.
Nearly 80 people were charged for the attacks but 28 were acquitted, prosecutor Amit Patel told reporters outside the court in Ahmedabad.
The remaining 49 people were found guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy and the sentencing was to come out on Wednesday (9), he said.
The marathon trial went on for almost a decade with more than 1,100 witnesses called to testify. Procedural delays hampered the case’s progress and that included a legal battle by four of the accused to retract their confessions, AFP reported.
In 2013, the police foiled an attempt by more than a dozen of the defendants to dig an escape tunnel from the jail by using food plates as tools.
All the 77 accused have been held in custody for many years excepting one who was bailed out following diagnosis of schizophrenia.
The year 2008 saw India getting targeted by several acts of terror.
A day before the blasts in Ahmedabad, the southern city of Bengaluru was targeted. There were also terror strikes in capital New Delhi, Jaipur, northeast and most importantly in Mumbai where 166 people were killed by gunmen who wreaked havoc in India’s ‘Maximum City’ in November that year.
Many of those who were killed in what India calls ‘26/11’ were foreign nationals.
