A court in India on Friday sentenced 38 Muslims to death for the July 2008 attacks in the western city of Ahmedabad. At the time, 56 people died and more than 200 were injured in a series of explosions that hit the region’s transport network, as well as residential areas, markets and hospitals – all within a span of just over half an hour.
Another 11 people were sentenced by the courts to life imprisonment. The convicts are part of a group calling itself “Indian Mujahideen”, which 14 years ago claimed responsibility for the attacks, defining them as an act of revenge for religious conflicts of previous years.
At the same time as the attacks, the group coordinated terrorist attacks and killed dozens of people in New Delhi and the northern tourist city of Jaipur. Also in 2008, 166 people were killed in a coordinated attack by men armed with explosives at hotels and other sites in Mumbai, an attack that authorities blamed on Pakistani militants.
The 49 defendants had already been sentenced by the court earlier this month, but the sentences had not been released. About 80 people were charged with the attacks, but 28 were acquitted, according to prosecutor Amit Patel.
Prior to the verdict, the prosecution had spoken out in favor of the death penalty for the accused, describing the attacks as “a rare case” in which innocent lives were lost. Defendants’ defense, on the other hand, had called for lenient sentences, “since they have already spent more than 13 years in prison” — lawyers are expected to appeal the decision.
The death penalty is not uncommon in India. According to data from Project 39A, an organization that seeks judicial equality in the country, 488 prisoners were on death row as of December 31, 2021. Last year, however, according to the survey, the Indian Supreme Court did not confirm any sentences. of death and acquitted four people.
The terrorists’ trial lasted more than a decade. More than 1,100 witnesses were heard and several delays were recorded in the process. In addition, during the period, the police prevented more than ten escape attempts by the accused. They would have used plates of food to dig tunnels in their cells.
Ahmedabad was the epicenter of religious conflicts in India for 20 years, when nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died at the time. The city is located in Gujarat, the same region where Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the independence movement against British rule in India, was born. The state is also where the country’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, was born, accused of adopting policies hostile to Muslims.
At the time of the attacks, Modi was chief minister of Gujarat, a state he ruled from 2001 to 2014, when he took up his current position. In 2002, he was accused of failing to protect Muslims during conflicts with Hindus in the region. About 14% of the Indian population is Muslim. There are 200 million, which makes the country have the second largest Islamic population in the world, after Indonesia.
More recently, in February 2020, Hindus and Muslims clashed in New Delhi, leaving a trail of destruction in India’s capital and dozens of deaths, according to local health services. Two mosques were burned in the city and around 200 people were injured, in one of the biggest waves of religious violence to hit the capital in more than three decades.
