Naroda Patiya Riots Case

Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate Kapil Sibal on Friday criticised the Ahmedabad court's decision to acquit all the 67 accused in the Naroda Gam case and asked whether "we should celebrate the rule of law or despair its demise". More than two decades after 11 Muslim community members were killed in the post-Godhra riots in Ahmedabad's Naroda Gam, a special court in Ahmedabad on Thursday acquitted all the 67 accused in the case, including former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani and ex-Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi. Reacting to the development, Sibal said on Twitter, "Naroda Gam: 11 of our citizens including a 12-year-old girl killed. After 21 years, 67 accused acquitted. Should we: Celebrate the rule of law or Despair its demise!" Later, he told reporters, "Somebody was killed. It is the job of the investigating agency to find out who did it. The investigating agency found out. Is it not a failure of the prosecuting agency that they could not bring them to justice." "Are the ...

Out of the total 61 accused in the case, the special SIT court had in August 2012 held 32 guilty, and acquitted 29 others

HC, while acquitting Kodnani, who was first made an accused by the SIT in 2008, said discarding investigations carried out by agencies before the SIT, or giving it less weightage, did not arise

The Naroda Patiya riot was one of the worst incidents after the Godhra train burning incident of February 27, 2002, in which 59 kar sevaks were killed

While Kodnani was acquitted, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi's sentence in the 2002 Naroda Patiya riot case was upheld by the Gujarat High Court

The conviction of Bajrang Dal leader, Babu Bajrangi who had also moved the court challenging the previous ruling, was upheld

The bench had also visited the scene of riots where 97 people were slain