Ahmedabad: A special SIT court will on Friday pronounce the quantum of sentence for 24 convicts in the Gulberg Society massacre in which 69 people, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, were killed.
The court of special judge P B Desai here had announced on Monday that the quantum of sentence will be declared on Friday, after submissions were made by the prosecution, defence lawyers as well as the lawyer of the victims.
Earlier on June 2, the court had convicted 11 persons for murder and other offences, while 13 others, including VHP leader Atul Vaidya, were charged with lesser offences. It had acquitted 36 others in the case.
During the argument, public prosecutor representing the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT), R C Kodekar asked the court for nothing less than death sentence or jail term till death for all 24 convicts.
Lawyer for the victims, S M Vora also sought maximum punishment for the accused and argued that sentencing for each offence should not run concurrently so that they spend their entire life in jail.
Lawyer of the accused, Abhay Bhardwaj, has refuted the demand of capital punishment or maximum punishment in his arguments saying that the incident was spontaneous and there were enough provocations for it.
It was one of the nine cases of the 2002 Gujarat riots probed by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT. The incident had taken place a day after S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was burnt near Godhra train station in which 58 'kar sevaks' returning from Ayodhya were killed.
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