Under pressure from the Supreme Court, police have decided to reopen 1,594 post-Godhra riot cases in Gujarat.

According to an Action-Taken Report prepared by the Gujarat police, 1,594 post-Godhra riot cases will be re-opened and action would be intiated against 41 police officials for their alleged role in handling the riots wherein hundreds of people from the minority community were killed in different parts of the state.

• The Gujarat Riots

Four years after the riots, the state police will finally crack the whip and arrest about 600 accused in these cases and file 13 new cases related to the communal riots that rocked the state after 59 kar sevaks were burnt alive in the Sabarmati
Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002.

The Action-Taken Report has been prepared by the post-Godhra riots inquiry committee team headed by Gujarat Director General of Police A K Bhargava constituted by the Supreme Court to re-examine about 2,000 cases which were closed.

Earlier, Gujarat police had tried to hush up many of these cases by filing their respective 'A' summaries and stating that there was lack of evidence against the accused.

The Superme Court had then intervened and had directed the Gujarat government to re-examine the 2,000-odd closed cases.

It had also constituted a 10-member riots inquiry committee, which was asked to look into the cases and file the Action Taken Report in the matter every quarter of the year.

The Action-Taken Report about reopening of the cases will be filed before the Supreme Court in a few weeks time, Gujarat police officials said.