Gujarat High Court has decided to expedite the final hearing of appeals pending before it in the 2002 Gulbarg Society massacre and take the appeals on priority.
The same was conveyed by a division bench headed by Justice JB Pardiwala, which has ordered the prosecution, the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team (SIT), to prepare the paper books related to the appeals and supply it to all the concerned parties within four weeks. Only after the prosecution supplies the paper books, which contains all the documents related to the case, the court can finalise the date for initiating final hearing in the cases.
Notably, the division bench ordered the SIT to supply the paper books after one of the advocates for the victim-witnesses, MM Tirmizi, submitted that they have not received the paper books and are not prepared to argue their case in the final hearing. The bench had earlier remarked that the appeals need to be heard expeditiously considering the fact that some of the accused in the case are behind bars for over a decade.
In this long-drawn and controversial case, the SIT had not filed an appeal against the trial court's July 2016 verdict in which 24 persons were convicted and 36 others were acquitted. There were 66 accused who were put on trial for killing 69 persons in the society in Chamanpura area on February 28, 2002, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri.
Six accused had died during the pendency of the trial and the verdict was delivered only with regard to 60 accused persons. Out of the 24 persons who got convicted, 11 were awarded life imprisonment for murder.
Apart from this, there were 12 accused who were punished for minor offences and imprisoned for five to 10 years. One person was awarded a jail term of six months.
While all the convicts appealed against their conviction in the high court, the victim-witnesses questioned the acquittal of the majority of the 36 persons. Also, they have appealed for enhancement of sentence for those who were convicted for minor offences.
