An ATS official said that Farooq Mohammad Bhana was one of the key accused, who hatched the conspiracy to burn the train at Godhra Railway Station on February 27, 2002.
Congress candidate C K Raul defeated Bharatiya Janata Party nominee and state minister Prabhat Sinh Chauhan in Godhra by 14,500 votes.
Terming the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat as "unfortunate", the Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday said the Narendra Modi government had taken "strong" steps to deal with the situation due to which such incidents have not recurred in the state. "As far as Modi is concerned, we consider the Godhra incident unfortunate and what followed afterwards in reaction to it -- we consider that also as unfortunate," BJP national general secretary Murlidhar Rao told reporters.
The Godhra case is related to burning of Sabramati Express's compartment C-6 at Godhra on February 27, 2002 in which 59 people were burnt alive.
Yakub Pataliya, 63, was arrested from Godhra by a team of B Division police in the town after they received a tip-off that he was spotted in a locality on Tuesday, the official said.
Following is the list of those convicted by the special court in the Godhra train burning case on Tuesday:
As Modi takes guard for a third term with trusted and seasoned hands around him, the BJP is hopeful that he will prove his detractors wrong and continue to fuel the party's expansion horizontally and vertically with his inventive policies in government and new set of ideas in politics with the core of Hindutva, development and welfarism remaining intact.
Fifty-nine 'karsevaks' were killed in the Godhra train burning incident of February 27, 2002, triggering the worst communal riots in the history of Gujarat.
The former president of Godhra municipality and was granted interim bail by a special POTA court in Ahmedabad on May 21, after his wife, Haseena, moved an application seeking a six-day bail for him.
Over 50 people, mostly pilgrims returning from Ayodhya, were burnt alive in two bogies of Sabarmati Express in Godhra in February 2002.
Several residents of a housing complex built by the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) under a Gujarat government scheme have been staging protests against the allotment of a flat to a Muslim woman, saying the locality is meant only for Hindus.
An accused in the Sabarmati Express carnage case was Wednesday arrested from Godhra town, police sources said.
"We have detained one more absconder but more information will be revealed later," Special IG (Vadodara range) Rakesh Asthana, who heads a Special Investigation Team probing the train carnage, said.
Police force was deployed in large numbers in the tense Polan Bazar area dominated by the minority community.
Rauf Abdul Majid Dhensli alias Kamli was nabbed from Satpul Odha locality in Godhra, Sub-Inspector R G Patel said.
But the police had to face stiff resistance as a mob pelted stones when they went to Godhra town to arrest Usman Abdul Gani Coffeewala.
The 10th anniversary of Godhra train carnage, which left 59 karsevaks dead and triggered one of worst communal riots in Gujarat that claimed the lives of over 1200 Muslims, will be marked today by a slew of events with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad taking out a rally and Non-Governmental Organisations coming together to demand justice for the riot victims.
Idris Yusuf Mafat was arrested from Lunawada town in Panchmahal district of Gujarat.
The Gujarat government on Thursday alleged the relief package announced by the Centre for the 2002 post-Godhra riot victims "has political overtones and is discriminatory in nature". Opposition Congress hailed the package, saying finally justice has been done.
Dropping references to the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the killing of Muslims in Gujarat riots and Hindutva, and tweaking the reference to Manipur's merger with India are among the latest set of revisions made public by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in its textbooks.
A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and Prashant Kumar Mishra noted, in accordance with its May 9 order, notices have been published in local newspapers, including those in Gujarati and English, against the convicts who could not be served (the notice).
An advocate, representing a section of the post-Godhra riot victims in the inquiry commission in Gujarat, has received a letter threatening to kill him and a Mumbai-based social activist. The letter writer threatens the advocate and accuses him of trying to incite and mislead the people of Gujarat on the Godhra issue. The writer goes on to say that both Sinha and social activist Teesta Setalvad, who runs the Mumbai-based NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace, will be eliminated.
Gujarat government's stand on the Godhra carnage has been vindicated by the judgment in the case, state government spokesperson Jaynarayan Vyas has said. "The judgment has established that this was a pre-planned conspiracy, hatched and executed with finesse, so the state government's stand has been vindicated," Vyas told reporters.The Bharatiya Janata Party also welcomed the Gujarat special court's verdict convicting 31 accused in the 2002 Godhra train burning case.
After a wait of nine years, the judgement in the Godhra case is likely to be delivered on February 19.
The agency is under criticism amid allegations of irregularities and inflation of marks in the crucial medical entrance exam.
A Godhra court Friday acquitted 52 accused in a post-Godhra riot case of Halol taluka, Panchmahal district, Gujarat.
Sources said the commission has completed the hearing of the matter related to the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express train on February 27, 2002.
'What did these men mean to the government? What does its support for these men say about this government?'
Both Houses had to be adjourned twice after agitated opposition members accused the Centre of trying to divide people on communal lines.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Friday began his 23rd 'Sadhbhavana' fast in Godhra, nearly a month ahead of the tenth anniversary of the Godhra carnage.
All those accused of arson, rioting and damaging the property of the minority community at Paliyad village in Kalol taluka of Gandhinagar district were already on bail.
A sessions court had recently rejected her discharge plea in the case, even as the Supreme Court granted her bail after the Gujarat high court denied her relief.
In its order of June 12, which was made available on June 15, the court of additional sessions judge Harsh Trivedi also slammed pseudo-secular media and politicians for claiming that the riots were planned.
This is the fifth extension for the panel.
Noel Parmar, the investigating officer in the Godhra case, has no doubt that the Sabarmati fire was meticulously thought out
Lalu laid the two-volume report immediately after he presented the railway budget for 2005-06.
Bones suspected to be of victims of post-Godhra riots were found by a Supreme Court-appointed investigation team at Ode village in Anand district of Gujarat during an excavation of the place, sources involved in the operation said. The SIT has been conducting a search operation since a couple of days at three sites at Ode village where about 25 people were killed by rioters six years ago.
A decade after Godhra provided the spark that ignited almost the whole of Gujarat into a communal cauldron, this relatively underdeveloped constituency in the prosperous state remains deeply divided along religious lines.
This is in connection with three post-Godhra riot cases in Panchmahals district.
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