PATNA, India, 8 July 2007 — An Indian court jailed 14 Hindus for life yesterday for killing 116 Muslims and burying their bodies in a cauliflower patch during one of India’s bloodiest religious riots almost 20 years ago.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Shambhunath Mishra delivered the sentence in a packed courtroom 18 years after the violence in Logai village. The village in the Jagdishpur block witnessed one of the worst killings in the month-long violence in Bhagalpur district.
The judge said since the case did not fall under the “rarest of rare cases” the death penalty could not be awarded.
However, Bihar Home Secretary Afzal Amanullah said the government will appeal in the high court to demand death sentences for the convicts. “We in the government firmly believe that the case qualifies as the rarest of rare and the convicts deserve the death sentence,” Amanullah said.
The 14 men, including a policeman, were part of a mob that hacked to death 116 Muslim men, women and children with swords and daggers on Oct. 27, 1989. More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in Bhagalpur in the rioting.
During a hearing in June the court found all the accused guilty.
Seven of the 14 accused are above 60 years of age with the oldest 82, according to court documents. Six other men accused of taking part in the killings have since died, four others are on the run.
The Bhagalpur riots were triggered in part by a Hindu procession carrying bricks to build a temple at the site of a medieval mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.
Hindu extremists, who believe the site to be the birthplace of the Hindu deity Ram, tore down the mosque on Dec. 6, 1992. The same controversy fueled deadly riots in the western Gujarat state in 2002.
