{"id":253,"date":"2004-02-21T12:27:20","date_gmt":"2004-02-21T16:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/02\/21\/13-witnesses-testify-in-gujarat-mass"},"modified":"2004-02-21T12:27:20","modified_gmt":"2004-02-21T16:27:20","slug":"13-witnesses-testify-in-gujarat-massacre-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/2004\/02\/21\/13-witnesses-testify-in-gujarat-massacre-case\/","title":{"rendered":"13 Witnesses Testify in Gujarat Massacre Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Breaking their silence of two years, 13 witnesses gave evidence<\/A><\/FONT> in the Bilkis Bano case<\/A><\/FONT>, stemming from the massacre of 14 Muslims during the Gujarat pogroms of 2002.  The witnesses, all from the village where the 14 people were killed, were escorted to Mumbai to give their testimony:<\/FONT><\/P>
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A CBI official, who did not want to be named, said that given the divide in Gujarat and the fact that several police officials were under suspicion for their role in the riots, the witnesses had to be moved to Mumbai. The witnesses, he said, had little confidence in the state’s law enforcement agencies. They could have been taken to a court in Ahmedabad too, he said, but they feared for their lives and some had to be persuaded to testify….<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P>
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Sources said that besides testifying on the divide and the tension in their village after the Godhra train attack, they have also revealed another important motive for rioters to ensure that fleeing Muslim families—like Bilkis’s—never returned home. The attackers had threatened to acquire properties owned by Muslims and after the riots, even grabbed their abandoned land and houses. <\/EM><\/FONT><\/P>
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The witnesses have, sources say, given at least one specific example of this—of how a large plot in Randhikpur was grabbed by one of the prime accused in the massacre.<\/EM><\/FONT><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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In another legal development, the Supreme Court has asked the Gujarat government<\/A> to appeal<\/FONT> the High Court’s acquittals<\/A><\/FONT> in the Best Bakery case.<\/FONT><\/P>
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The Gujarat section<\/A> <\/FONT>contains information on developments in the Bilkis Bano case, among other news.<\/FONT><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breaking their silence of two years, 13 witnesses gave evidence in the Bilkis Bano case, stemming from the massacre of 14 Muslims during the Gujarat pogroms of 2002.  The witnesses, all from the village where the 14 people were killed, were escorted to Mumbai to give their testimony: A CBI official, who did not want […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jaskaran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}