A special trial court in Ahmedabad is expected to pronounce verdict on June 2 in the 2002 Gulberg Society case in which 69 persons, including former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, were killed during riots.
Gulberg Society case is one of the nine riot cases looked into by the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team headed by R.K. Raghavan, former chief of the CBI.
More than 1,000 people, mostly of the minority community, had lost their lives in the violence that broke out after 59 people, mostly kar sevaks, returning from Ayodhya were burnt alive in S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express train at the Godhra Railway Station.
Thirty-nine people were burnt alive and the rest had gone missing. They were then presumed dead. Azhar, a young Parsi boy, was among those who went missing. It was based on this that film maker Rahul Dholakia made Parzania.
Gulberg Society is the second last case in which the judgment is to come.
The Supreme Court had stayed the trial in major cases from Gujarat following petitions by National Human Rights Commission and Citizens of Justice and Peace that had sought shifting of cases out of Gujarat. The petitioners had also demanded a CBI probe into the cases.
The SIT was formed after the directive of the apex court in 2008.