'Gujarat riots cases were sabotaged'

Human Rights Watch urged the Indian government on Tuesday to take over cases related to the communal killings that shook Gujarat last year, saying ringleaders of killer gangs were still roaming free.

In a 70-page report, the New York-based watchdog examined the record of state authorities in holding perpetrators accountable and giving humanitarian relief to victims of violence directed against Muslims in February and March 2002.

It urged the central government to take over cases of large-scale killings where, it alleged, the Gujarat government has sabotaged investigations.

The report, titled "Compounding Injustice: The Government's Failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat", noted that on June 27, a Gujarat court acquitted 21 people accused of burning 12 Muslims in a bakery in Vadodara.

Thirty-five of the 73 witnesses reportedly retracted in court the statements they had given to the police identifying the attackers.

"The government's record on the massacres is appalling," said Smita Narula, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch and author of the report.

"Sixteen months after the beginning of the violence, not a single person has been convicted."

The violence in Gujarat erupted following the burning of 59 passengers in a train in the town of Godhra on February 27 last year. Many of them were members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Human Rights Watch said over 100 Muslims had been charged under India's much-criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra.

But no Hindu had been charged under POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims, "which the government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganised", said the report.

Even when cases reach trial, Muslim victims face biased prosecutors and judges, it said.

Hindu and Muslim lawyers representing victims of the violence and doctors providing medical relief faced harassment and threats, it said.