Induction of a massacre: the conduct and legacy of Accused no 37.

ABSTRACT

On August 29, 2012, a court in Ahmedabad ruled in a case involving 61 individuals accused of the massacre of 96 Muslims in Naroda Patiya, Gujarat, on February 28, 2002. The massacres occurred a day after a terrible fire engulfed a train near Godhra, Gujarat, in which 59 karsevaks (volunteer workers for a religious cause) were burnt alive, and more than 100 injured. The karsevaks were returning from Ayodhya where they were participating in a campaign to build a temple dedicated to Ram on a site where a mosque had stood. Subsequently, Naroda Patiya was one of many towns in Gujarat affected by riots in which thousands of individuals, mainly Muslims, were murdered, raped, looted, and displaced, their homes ransacked, their livelihoods destroyed by activists of Hindu fundamentalist organisations. For over a decade, victims of these pogroms have sought justice for their murdered kin and for their own injuries, physical and psychological.