38 People Handed Death Penalty More Than 13 Years After Bomb Attack Conviction

An Indian court has sentenced 38 people to death for carrying out a terror attack that killed 56 people in 2008.

More than a dozen bombs were set off in hospitals, shopping centres and parks across the city of Ahmedabad in the attack, responsibility for which was claimed by the terrorist group Indian Mujahideen, but was blamed by Gujarat state police on a network of radical Islamic groups.

Last week, 49 people were convicted of the attacks by a special court judge, with a further 28 acquitted for lack of evidence. The 38 death sentences handed down are believed to be the most for a single case in India's modern legal history.

Victims of the bombings (Alamy)

The other 11 convicted of charges including murder, conspiracy to wage war against the state and illegal possession of arms were sentenced to life imprisonment, per CNN.

The trial of the 77 people accused of planning and carrying out the attacks concluded in September last year, more than 13 years after the first arrest was made in connection with the bombings.

The attacks, which took place on July 26 2008, saw a series of bombs hidden in lunchboxes and bicycles set off around the city, before a car laden with explosives was detonated later at a hospital that had received casualties and where people had gathered to give blood.

The group which claimed responsibility for the attacks was relatively unknown at the time, but is believed to emerged out of the Students Islamic Movement of India, whose former leader Safdar Nagori was among those sentenced to death on Friday, February 18.

Wreckage from a bomb (Alamy)

The Indian Mujahideen said the blasts were revenge for the 2002 Gujarat riots, a wave of violence against Muslims in the region sparked by a deadly train fire that killed 60 Hindu pilgrims and was blamed on Muslims, though the cause was never confirmed.

At the time of the riots and the 2008 attacks, current Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the top elected official in Gujarat and was accused of condoning the violence. Over recent years hostility towards Muslims has worsened in India, with observers warning of a rising tide of nationalist violence in the country.

The Guardian reports that death sentences, while still legal, are becoming relatively rare in India, with the most recent executions taking place in May 2020 involving four men convicted of the rape and murder of a 22-year-old woman in Delhi in 2012.

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