All you need to know about Godhra train burning case

Agencies
October 9, 2017

New Delhi, Oct 9: The Gujarat high court is likely to pronounce its verdict on a set of appeals challenging convictions and acquittals by a Special Investigation Team court in the 2002 Godhra train burning case on Monday, more than two years after the completion of hearings on the matter.

The judgement will be delivered by a bench of justice Anant Dave and justice GR Udhwani at about 11am.

Here’s all you need to know about the case:

Train set on fire

A coach of the Sabarmati Express was set on fire at Godhra on February 27, 2002. The blaze in S6 coach killed 59 Hindus, mostly karsevaks or volunteers returning from Ayodhya, where rival Hindu and Muslim groups are locked in a decades-old dispute over a religious site.

The train fire sparked three days of reprisal attacks across the state that left 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus dead, official sources say. And as many as 100,000 Muslims and 40,000 Hindus were rendered homeless in the riots. About 130 are still reported missing.

Probe into the carnage

The Nanavati Commission, appointed by the Gujarat government to probe the incident, concluded that the fire in the coach was not an accident but it was set on fire. The Sangh Parivar claimed the train fire was targeted at the Hindus, who were returning to Ayodhya after a pilgrimage.

A damning report of Mohinder Singh Dahiya, the then assistant director of Gandhinagar’s Forensic Studies Laboratory (FSL), concluded that the coach was set afire by someone “standing in the passage of the compartment near seat number 72, using a container with a wide opening about 60 litres of inflammable liquid has been poured and then a fire has been started in the bogie”.

The accused

The special SIT court on March 1, 2011, convicted 31 people and acquitted 63 in the case. While 11 people were sentenced to death, 20 were handed out life imprisonment.

The court convicted 31 people while accepting the prosecution’s contention that there was a conspiracy behind the incident.

All the 31 were convicted under various sections of the Indian Penal Code related to murder, attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy. Those acquitted included prime accused Maulana Umarji, the then president of Godhra municipality Mohammad Hussain Kalota, Mohammad Ansari and Nanumiya Chaudhary of Gangapur, Uttar Pradesh.

Later, several appeals were filed in the high court challenging the convictions, while the Gujarat government questioned the acquittal of the 63 people.

The 2002 Gujarat riots

There were SIT probes into the involvement of several political leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi - who was then the Gujarat chief minister - for criminal conspiracy in the riots. Modi and others were cleared after the SIT filed a closure report on February 8, 2012.

Maya Kodnani, the women and child welfare minister in the then Modi government in Gujarat, was sentenced to life in prison for a separate case of rioting in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya area, a verdict she has challenged. She has been on bail since 2014.

Comments

Althaf
 - 
Monday, 9 Oct 2017

When court is controlling by sangh parivar then what verdict we can expect ?? All verdict will be in favor of sangh parivar.

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March 24,2020

New Delhi, Mar 24: Thirty-two states and Union Territories (UTs) have announced complete lockdown to check the spread of the coronavirus in the country, informed the Central government on Tuesday.
There is a complete lockdown in as many as 560 districts of the country affecting several hundred million people.
Earlier, the complete lockdown was imposed in 30 districts, as of now, almost the entire country is in lockdown to restrict public movement in an attempt to break the chain of transmission of coronavirus.
Three states -- Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha -- have announced lockdown in select districts with the governments continuously monitoring the situation and ready to extend the restrictions to other districts as well.
The Union Territory of Lakshadweep has announced restrictions on certain activities.
The Indian Railways has suspended all passenger train operations till March 31 in view of coronavirus.

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News Network
April 18,2020

New Delhi, Apr 18: With 957 new cases of COVID-19 in the last 24 hours and 36 deaths, India's total count of coronavirus cases has surged to 14,792, said the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Saturday.

The total cases are inclusive of 2,014 cured and discharged patients, one migrated and 488 deaths. At present, there are 12,289 active COVID-19 cases in the country.

Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said that mortality rate due to COVID-19 in our country is around 3.3 per cent.

"An age-wise analysis will tell you that 14.4 per cent of deaths have been reported in the age group of 0-45 years. Between 45-60 years it is 10.3 percent, between 60-75 years it is 33.1 percent and for 75 years, and above it is 42.2 percent," Aggarwal said at a press conference here.

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News Network
January 7,2020

Dubai/Washington, Jan 7: Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wept in grief with hundreds of thousands of mourners thronging Tehran's streets on Monday for the funeral of military commander Qassem Soleimani, killed by a U.S. drone on U.S. President Donald Trump's orders.

The coffins of General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who also died in Friday's attack in Baghdad, were draped in their national flags and passed from hand to hand over the heads of mourners in central Tehran.

Responding to Trump's threats to hit 52 Iranian sites if Tehran retaliates for the drone strike, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani pointedly wrote on Twitter: "Never threaten the Iranian nation." And Soleimani's successor vowed to expel U.S. forces from the Middle East in revenge.

Khamenei, 80, led prayers at the funeral, pausing as his voice cracked with emotion. Soleimani, 62, was a national hero in Iran, even to many who do not consider themselves supporters of Iran's clerical rulers.

Aerial footage showed people, many clad in black, packing thoroughfares and side streets in the Iranian capital, chanting "Death to America!" - a show of national unity after anti-government protests in November in which many demonstrators were killed.

The crowd, which state media said numbered in the millions, recalled the masses of people that gathered in 1989 for the funeral of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Soleimani, architect of Iran's drive to extend its influence across the Middle East, was widely seen as Iran's second most powerful figure behind Khamenei.

His killing of Soleimani has prompted concern around the world that a broader regional conflict could flare.

Trump on Saturday vowed to strike 52 Iranian targets, including cultural sites, if Iran retaliates with attacks on Americans or U.S. assets, and stood by his threat on Sunday, though American officials sought to downplay his reference to cultural targets. The 52 figure, Trump noted, matched the number of U.S. Embassy hostages held for 444 days after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Rouhani, regarded as a moderate, responded to Trump on Twitter.

"Those who refer to the number 52 should also remember the number 290. #IR655," Rouhani wrote, referring to the 1988 shooting down of an Iranian airline by a U.S. warship in which 290 were killed.

Trump also took to Twitter to reiterate the White House stance that "Iran will never have a nuclear weapon" but gave no other details.

'ACTIONS WILL BE TAKEN'

General Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani's successor as commander of the Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards charged with overseas operations, promised to "continue martyr Soleimani's cause as firmly as before with the help of God, and in return for his martyrdom we aim to rid the region of America."

"God the Almighty has promised to take martyr Soleimani's revenge," he told state television. "Certainly, actions will be taken."

Other political and military leaders have made similar, unspecific threats. Iran, which lies at the mouth of the key Gulf oil shipping route, has a range of proxy forces in the region through which it could act.

Iran's demand for U.S. forces to withdraw from the region gained traction on Sunday when Iraq's parliament passed a resolution calling for all foreign troops to leave the country.

Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Abdel Abdul Mahdi told the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad on Monday that both nations needed to implement the resolution, the premier's office said in a statement. It did not give a timeline.

The United States has about 5,000 troops in Iraq.

Soleimani built a network of proxy militia that formed a crescent of influence - and a direct challenge to the United States and its regional allies led by Saudi Arabia - stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Outside the crescent, Iran nurtured allied Palestinian and Yemeni groups.

He notably mobilised Shi'ite Muslim militia forces in Iraq that helped to crush ISIS, the Sunni militant group that had seized control of swathes of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

Washington, however, blames Soleimani for attacks on U.S. forces and their allies.

The funeral moves to Soleimani's southern home city of Kerman on Tuesday. Zeinab Soleimani, his daughter, told mourners in Tehran that the United States would face a "dark day" for her father's death, adding, "Crazy Trump, don't think that everything is over with my father's martyrdom."

NUCLEAR DEAL

Iran stoked tensions on Sunday by dropping all limitations on its uranium enrichment, another step back from commitments under a landmark deal with major powers in 2015 to curtail its nuclear programme that Trump abandoned in 2018.

In response, European signatories may launch a dispute resolution process against Iran this week that could lead to a renewal of the United Nations sanctions that were lifted as part of the deal, European diplomats said on Monday.

Diplomats said France, Britain and Germany could make a decision ahead of an EU foreign ministers' meeting on Friday that would assess whether there were any ways to salvage the deal.

After quitting the deal, the United States imposed new sanctions on Iran, saying it wanted to halt Iranian oil exports, the main source of government revenues. Iran's economy has been in freefall as the currency has plunged.

Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway said on Monday that he was still confident he could renegotiate a new nuclear agreement "if Iran wants to start behaving like a normal country."

Tehran has said Washington must return to the existing nuclear pact and lift sanctions before any talks can take place.

The United States advised American citizens in Israel and the Palestinian territories to be vigilant, citing the risk of rocket fire amid heightened tensions. As a U.S. ally against Iran, Israel is concerned about possible rocket attacks from Gaza, ruled by Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamists, or major Iran proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Democratic critics of Trump have said the Republican president was reckless in authorising the strike, with some saying his threat to hit cultural sites amounted to a vow to commit war crimes. Trump also threatened sanctions against Iraq and said Baghdad would have to pay Washington for an air base in Iraq if U.S. troops were required to leave.

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