By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday issued notice to the Gujarat government on a plea for a comprehensive probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into a mass grave of 21 victims of the post-Godhra communal riots that was discovered in Panchmahal district of the state two years ago.
On a petition by social activist Teesta Setalvad, a bench of Justices B.N. Agarwal and P.P. Naolekar also issued notice to the CBI and sought the stands of both parties within four weeks.
Setalvad in her petition told the bench that 21 bodies of the 2002 post-Godhra riot victims were exhumed in December 2005 by their relatives from Pandharwada village outside Lunwada town in Panchmahal district.
She said that bodies of the Muslims, who had been butchered in the March 1, 2002, attack, were callously dumped in a 300-acre graveyard belonging to different sects of the Muslim community.
The relatives of the Pandharwada village victims took up the task of digging the grave in 2005 after their fervent plea to the state authorities in tracing the bodies failed to have any effect.
Setalvad also raised doubts whether the state authorities had at all conducted the mandatory autopsy of the victims as done in case of unnatural deaths.
In her petition to the apex court, the social activist also pleaded for proper DNA testing of the remains to ascertain the relatives of the victims so that they could be given a dignified burial.
The petitioner recalled that Justice C.K. Buch of the Gujarat High Court had on Dec 29, 2005, ordered CBI to arrange DNA testing of the skeletons to ascertain their relatives.
Following the tests, reports for which were submitted in May 2006, the DNA of six of the skeletal remains matched some of the survivors of the massacre.
But a different bench of the court, which adjudicated the matter later, did not allow it to reach its logical conclusion.