For Gulberg, ‘darkest day’, judge gives life

A special SIT court on Friday called the Gulberg Society massacre in Gujarat the “darkest day” in the history of civil society and awarded life terms to 11 convicts for burning alive 69 people, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, in one of the worst riots of the post-Godhra violence of 2002.

However, the judgment left the prosecution, Jafri’s widow Zakia and civil rights activists disappointed because they found the sentences lenient considering the brutality and scale of the violence in the residential colony in Gujarat’s capital.

The court ruled out the conspiracy angle, saying firing by Ehsan Jafri provoked the mob into a “killing frenzy”, but asserted that the firing cannot condone the acts of the mob.

Rejecting the demand for capital punishment for all the convicts, the court said life imprisonment for the 11 will be till death if the state does not exercise its power to remit the sentence, which special court judge P.B. Desai said was not necessary. He refused to add the “till death” clause to the life sentences.

The court awarded a 10-year jail term to Mangilal Jain, one of the 13 convicted of lesser offences, while the other 12 were given a seven-year sentence each. The prosecution had argued that all 24 convicts should be given the death penalty.

Though the judge described the massacre as civil society’s “darkest day”, he refused to sentence the convicts to hang, saying, “If you look at all aspects, no previous antecedent has been placed on record.” After the massacre, 90 per cent of the accused were released on bail. Yet no complaints against them have been given, even by victims, and there is no record to show that they committed any offence when they were on bail, the judge said, giving the reasons why he thought this was not a case fit for capital punishment.

The court said it decided to award imprisonment for life without any time frame to 11 convicted of murder and requested the state not to use its power to remit the sentence after 14 years of imprisonment. “CrPC provisions give the state the power to remit the sentence after 14 years’ jail. Section 433-A imposes some restrictions on that power. In case the state does not exercise the power to remit the sentence, life imprisonment will mean that it is till death,” the judge said.

“I cannot add beyond what has been prescribed under Section 302. It is not necessary for a state to exercise its power to remit the sentence. The state may not exercise the power of remittance,” the judge said, adding that the court’s direction cannot be binding as he cannot take away the state’s executive powers.

R.C. Kodekar, special public prosecutor and counsel for the Supreme Court-appointed SIT, expressed dissatisfaction and said they would appeal in the high court as he felt the sentence was too “lenient”. Mr Kodekar was especially upset at the court’s refusal to add the “till death” clause to the 11 life sentences handed down. “Today’s verdict is not that satisfactory. We feel the sentence is lenient and inadequate. During arguments we had appealed to the court that life imprisonment till death should be given to all. We are not convinced with the penalty awarded,” said Mr Kodekar. “Twelve convicts were given only seven years, which is very lenient too. It should be either ten years or life imprisonment,” he said.

Zakia Jafri said life sentences should have been given to all the convicts; her son Tanvir said that with the convictions and sentencing there was definitely “some sense of closure”.

Activist-lawyer Teesta Setalvad, who has been appearing in cases relating to the Gujarat riots, said she was very disappointed. “We had argued for exemplary punishment of life sentence for the convicts as there is no ground for leniency to the persons who were indulging in rioting from 9 am to 6 pm,” she said.

The Gulberg Society massacre, which took place here on February 28, 2002 when Narendra Modi was the Gujarat chief minister, shook the nation when a mob of 400 people set about attacking the society in the heart of Ahmedabad and burnt alive its residents. It was one of the nine cases of the 2002 Gujarat riots probed by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT and occurred a day after coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express was burnt near Godhra train station, resulting in the deaths of 58 karsevaks returning from Ayodhya.

“All the sentences will run concurrently as the Supreme Court has laid down clearly that if the crime had a single purpose, sentences given for different sections of the IPC should run concurrently,” the court said.