The top court also asked lawyers for other convicts and the Gujarat government to file a revised preliminary compilation on similar lines.In one of the earlier hearings, the apex court had asked the parties to translate the court records — which are in Gujarati — to English and digitise them so that the records are accessible to all the concerned parties in the case. It has clarified that this would help the parties to understand better.It is also significant to note that the Gujarat government has also filed some separate appeals challenging the commutation of the sentence of the accused from the death penalty to a life sentence by the state High Court. The appeals have been pending since 2018.According to the prosecution, the crime, which took place on February 27, 2002, resulted in the brutal killing of 58 persons in a fire inside the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express, which was carrying kar sevaks (Hindu volunteers) from Ayodhya. The Godhra carnage triggered communal riots in Gujarat.Last year, the bench of the Supreme Court, headed by the former Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud rejected the bail pleas filed by three convicts of the 2002 Godhra train burning case — Saukat Abdulla Moulvi Ismail Badam, Siddik Mohammad Mora (Moraiya) and Bilal — keeping in view their acts and specific roles assigned to them. “The incident is serious, not isolated ones. We are at this stage not inclined to grant them bail,” the former CJI Chandrachud said in the order.It is to be noted that as these three convicts’ — Badam, Mora and Bilal — death sentences had been commuted by the Gujarat High Court to life imprisonment, the state government has filed separate appeals challenging the same in the top court.
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