The Gujarat Government on February 20 informed the Supreme Court that it would seek the death penalty for 11 prisoners whose sentences in the Godhra train burning case of 2002 were converted to life imprisonment by the state’s high court.
A bench comprised of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justices PS Narasimha and JB Pardiwala, and Justice DY Chandrachud also set bail hearings for numerous suspects in the case for three weeks later.
The court requested that attorneys for both sides submit a combined chart containing facts such as the actual sentences imposed and the time spent in jail to date.
“We will vigorously advocate for the execution of those whose death sentences were modified to life imprisonment” (by the Gujarat High Court). This is the rarest of rare incidents in which 59 people, including women and children, were burned alive, the Gujarat government’s Solicitor General Tushar Mehta informed the bench.
“It is uniformly the case that the monster was imprisoned from the outside. There were 59 deaths, including women and children”, he added.
The law enforcement officer explained that the trial court imposed death sentences on eleven convicts and life sentences on twenty others.
Mehta stated that the high court affirmed a total of 31 convictions in the case and modified the death sentences of 11 prisoners to life sentences.
On February 27, 2002, 59 people were killed when the S-6 train coach was burned in Gujarat’s Godhra, sparking rioting throughout the state.
