"31 guilty of killing Muslims in India riot" November 10, 2011|By Hari Kumar, New York Times
NEW DELHI - A court in India found 31 people guilty yesterday of killing 33 Muslims in riots in Gujarat state in 2002. They were convicted of murder, arson, rioting, and criminal conspiracy, and were sentenced to life in prison, along with fines. Forty-two other defendants were acquitted.
The mass trial followed an investigation ordered by the country’s Supreme Court after the police failed to take effective action in response to the riots, which erupted March 1, 2002. That evening, a mob of Hindu rioters surrounded houses belonging to Muslims in Sardarpura village in the district of Mehsana and set them on fire, burning dozens of people alive, including men, women, and children.
Killings, arson, and looting continued throughout the night, with attackers burning shops and houses owned by Muslims. Most of the village’s Muslim families moved after that.
Sectarian tensions were running high in Gujarat state at that time because of a deadly attack two days earlier on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims at Godhra, a predominantly Muslim area. An angry mob surrounded the train and set fire to a sleeper car, killing 59 passengers. Rioting broke out across Gujarat for weeks afterward, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.
It will be the 21st-century narrative, much as the Jews were the 20th.
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