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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday granted bail to eight convicts in the 2002 Godhra carnage while refusing any relief to four who are on death row.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha granted bail to 8 convicts on the conditions imposed by the Sessions Court.
On February 20 this year, the Court had sought details of the convicts including their age and time served in prison to aid it in deciding the bail applications moved by them.
The Gujarat government, represented by Solicitor General (SG) Tushar Mehta, had voiced strong disagreement with Gujarat High Court’s 2017 decision to reduce the death sentence awarded to 11 convicts to life imprisonment.
Mehta apprised the Court that the trial court had awarded the life sentence to 20 convicts and the death sentence to 11 convicts. The High Court later commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment for the 11 convicts, he recounted.
Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde said that some of the convicts were now in their 60s. Hegde also left it to the Court to take a call on whether the death sentence is maintainable or not against the 11 convicts who were earlier given this punishment by the trial court.
Senior Advocate KTS Tulsi informed the Court that one of the accused, Bilal Ismail, did not know Gujarati when he had put his thumb impression on a document, without knowing the contents of the statement.
Last December, the top Court had granted bail to one of the 31 convicts in the Godhra train burning of February 2002.
The Godhra train burning had sparked communal riots in Gujarat in which around 2,000 people were killed.
