NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has scheduled the final hearing of the 2002 Godhra train burning case on May 6 and 7.
The appeals were filed by the Gujarat government and several convicts against the Gujarat High Court's 2017 order.
A two-judge bench of the apex court, led by Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Rajesh Bindal, fixed the dates for final hearing.
The Gujarat High Court in 2017, convicted 31 persons, of whom 11 were sentenced to death.
Challenging this order, the Gujarat government had approached the apex court seeking the award of the death penalty to the 11 convicts whose sentences in the case were commuted to life imprisonment by the HC.
Similarly, the convicts who were convicted of life imprisonment by the HC had moved the apex court seeking acquittal in the case.
During the course of the hearing on Thursday, the apex court asked senior advocate Sanjay Hegde, appearing for one of the convicts, to file a revised compilation of his submissions containing “heading-wise” details on charges against the convict, the findings of the courts and his arguments supported by materials on record to counter them by May 3.
The top court also asked lawyers for other convicts and the Gujarat government to file a revised preliminary compilation on similar lines.
In one of the earlier hearings, the apex court had asked the parties to translate the court records -- which are in Gujarati -- to English and digitise them so that the records are accessible to all the concerned parties in the case. It has clarified that this would help the parties to understand better.
It is also significant to note that the Gujarat government has also filed some separate appeals challenging the commutation of the sentence of the accused from the death penalty to a life sentence by the state High Court. The appeals have been pending since 2018.
According to the prosecution, the crime, which took place on February 27, 2002, resulted in the brutal killing of 58 persons in a fire inside the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express, which was carrying kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) from Ayodhya. The Godhra carnage triggered communal riots in Gujarat.
Last year, the bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud rejected the bail pleas filed by three convicts of the 2002 Godhra train burning case -- Saukat Abdulla Moulvi Ismail Badam, Siddik Mohammad Mora (Moraiya) and Bilal -- keeping in view their acts and specific roles assigned to them. "The incident is serious, not isolated ones. We are at this stage not inclined to grant them bail," the former CJI Chandrachud said in the order.
It is to be noted that as these three convicts' -- Badam, Mora and Bilal -- death sentences had been commuted by the Gujarat High Court to life imprisonment, the state government has filed separate appeals challenging the same in the top court.
The convicts had played a specific role, like pouring petrol and being involved in other offences, the state government claimed.
Earlier, in May 2022, the top court had granted interim bail to one convict, Abdul Rahman Dhantiya on medical grounds to attend to his wife and mentally challenged daughters. In December 2022, it also granted bail to another convict who had spent 17 years in jail.
The February 27, 2002, train burning cases in Godhra led to communal riots in Gujarat.
A total of 31 convicts were sentenced by the trial court in 2011 — 11 were sentenced to death and 20 to life imprisonment. In 2017, the Gujarat High Court commuted the death sentence to life terms — all 31 got life imprisonment.