24 Convicted in Massacre of Muslims During Gujarat Riots in India
NEW DELHI — Twenty-four people were found guilty on Thursday of massacring Muslims during the 2002 religious riots that tore through Gujarat, a state then led by Narendra Modi, who is now India’s prime minister.
A judge in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, acquitted 36 people for lack of evidence, including a police inspector and a midranking official in the Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Mr. Modi.
The verdict is the latest in more than a dozen prosecutions arising from the riots, and the first since Mr. Modi became prime minister. The judge did not implicate officials who were working under Mr. Modi’s authority at the time, and the ruling rejected charges of conspiracy, casting the massacre instead as an episode of mob violence.
But it was a reminder of a bloody episode that the prime minister, now a high-profile international leader, has taken great pains to put behind him. On trips abroad, including to the United States next week, Mr. Modi will probably face more questions about communal violence and the far-right agenda advanced by some in his party.
Two more cases stemming from the Gujarat riots, in which about 1,000 people were killed over the course of two months, are still pending. One of those cases, brought by the widow of Ehsan Jafri, a former member of Parliament who was killed in the attacks, seeks to establish that the riots were the result of a high-level conspiracy involving Mr. Modi.
The case on Thursday involved the attack in which Mr. Jafri was killed, on Feb. 28, 2002, one of the worst episodes of the Gujarat riots. A crowd of Muslims, mostly women and children, had taken shelter in a compound in Ahmedabad from a mob of thousands of Hindu men armed with stones, iron rods and gasoline-soaked rags.
www.nytimes.com/2016/06/03/world/asia/gu...ia-verdict.html?_r=0 
