Law Minister Veerappa Moily said the Gujarat court's judgement in the Godhra case does not justify the riots that followed the train burning incident.
"The judgement does not justify the riots that followed after (train burning) it," Moily told reporters outside Parliament.
Eleven convicts in the Godhra train burning case were today handed down death sentence while 20 others were given life imprisonment by a special court in the 2002 incident that left 59 karsevaks dead. The incident triggered riots which left over 1200 dead in Gujarat.
"How can you justify that... trial of those (riot) cases has to go on independently and culprits have to be punished," he said. Asked to
Welcoming the verdict, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Balbir Punj said, "This is a good judgement. The conspiracy to defame the Gujarat government was put to rest. The allegation that the bogey was put on fire by Karsevaks itself to engineer the riot was proved as false allegation."
