Indian court jails 11 for life over Gujarat massacre of Muslims

NEW DELHI – An Indian court jailed 11 Hindu attackers for life on Friday for murdering dozens of Muslims in one of the most notorious massacres of the 2002 Gujarat riots that shook India at a time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state’s chief minister.

The court sentenced 12 others to seven years in jail over the killing of 69 Muslims, while another was handed a 10-year sentence, prosecutors told local television channels after the sentencing.

A Hindu mob scaled the boundary wall of the Gulbarg housing society in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, in February 2002 before torching the homes in which Muslim families were trapped. Several victims were children and women who were burned to death.

The massacre was one of a series of riots that flared for two months in western Gujarat, killing more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.

The riots dogged Modi’s political career for years after he was accused of not doing enough to stop the violence. Modi, a Hindu, denies any wrongdoing and in 2013 a panel appointed by the Supreme Court said there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him.

An Indian court this month convicted 24 Hindus for their role in the massacre at the Gulbarg housing society while acquitting 36. The trial began in 2009.

Zakia Jafri, whose husband and former Congress party legislator, Ehsan, died in the blaze, said Friday’s sentences were insufficient.

“I am not satisfied with this verdict. I have to start all over again. This is wrong,” she told media.

Jafri, who is fighting what may be the last legal battle to pin blame on Modi, says that she saw her husband making repeated desperate calls to police for help.

He was dragged out of his ancestral home by sword-wielding men and within minutes was stripped and killed, according to Jafri.

For more than a decade the riots tainted Modi’s international reputation even as he rose in power at home, culminating in his 2014 general election victory.

The United States revoked Modi’s visa in 2005 but allowed him to travel again after his election victory. Since then, Modi has projected an image of a modern, international leader and travelled widely.

Modi was feted by US lawmakers on a visit to Washington this month, giving a speech to both houses of Congress in which he described India as a “modern nation, with freedom, democracy and equality as the essence of its soul”.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp is planning to pay compensation of around US$600 million (S$810 million) to compensate owners of four minivehicles models where it overstated mileage readings, with each owner receiving 100,000 yen (US$960), the Nikkei newspaper said on Friday.

Mitsubishi in April admitted to overstating the fuel economy for some 625,000 minivehicles including two models produced for Nissan Motor Co. It has said improper mileage calculations may have been used for nine other models.

The automaker was not immediately available for comment. It plans to brief from 3 pm Tokyo time (0600 GMT) to provide an update on an ongoing investigation into its falsification of fuel economy data.

It was not immediately clear from the Nikkei report how much compensation would or would not be offered for other vehicles where it used wrong fuel economy data and tests.

Mitsubishi Motors CEO Osamu Masuko, outgoing President and COO Tetsuro Aikawa and Executive Vice President Ryugo Nakao will attend the briefing at Japan’s Transport Ministry.

The scandal, which the company has blamed on pressure to deliver competitive mileage readings and poor supervision of testing processes, has led to plans for Nissan to take a one-third controlling stake in the embattled automaker. Aikawa will step down later this month.

In the wake of the scandal, Japanese automakers’ mileage calculations have come under increased scrutiny. An investigation by the transport ministry has found that Suzuki Motor Corp was also using wrong methods to calculate mileage for models going back to 2010.

China sent ships on Friday in response to a request from Vietnam to help find a coastguard plane that crashed with nine personnel aboard while looking for a missing fighter jet and pilot, Vietnam’s defence ministry said.

The CASA turboprop plane went down on Thursday in the Gulf of Tonkin, between Vietnam’s northern coastline and China’s Hainan Island, where the rescue team had found some debris and personal items, the ministry said in a statement.

The Airbus-made plane was searching for a Sukhoi SU-30 MK2 fighter jet and a missing pilot that went off radar on Tuesday. One of the two fighter pilots was rescued from the sea the following day.

Thousands of Vietnamese coastguard, border guard, navy, air force and fishermen have been searching for the aircraft and the second pilot.

China sent one rescue and two coastguard boats to help search for the CASA plane in response to Vietnam’s request for assistance and to allow its vessels to enter the Chinese side of a maritime boundary agreed between the two countries. The coastguard plane went down in bad weather and low visibility.

Vietnam has suffered a series of accidents in the past two years with its aging helicopters, but plane crashes have been rare.

It is currently overseeing its biggest military buildup in four decades and wants to upgrade its air and sea defences, including plans to purchase fighter jets, a strategy experts say is aimed at building a deterrent against China’s military rise.

The Communist parties that rule China and Vietnam are historically close, but tensions are high over territorial disputes between them in the South China Sea.

Vietnam has stepped up efforts to strengthen its coastguard, with help from Japan, which has its own maritime squabbles with China, and the United States, which has repeatedly locked horns with Beijing and insists it has stake in ensuring freedom of navigation and flight in the South China Sea.