Mass rape and murder: Frightened witnesses break their two-year silence

The case, highlighted first by The Indian Express, was re-opened when the apex court directed the CBI to take charge. Since then, the CBI has exhumed evidence of human remains and a trail of cover-up by the Gujarat police.

Most of the 13 are poor cowherds and farmers, who after the re-opening of the Bilkis case by the Supreme Court, have gathered courage. Their statements were recorded a few days ago (under Section 161 CrPC) by the CBI and today, before the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (under Section 164 Cr PC) as admissible evidence.

A CBI official, who did not want to be named, said that given the divide in Gujarat and the fact that several police officials were under suspicion for their role in the riots, the witnesses had to be moved to Mumbai. The witnesses, he said, had little confidence in the state’s law enforcement agencies. They could have been taken to a court in Ahmedabad too, he said, but they feared for their lives and some had to be persuaded to testify.

Meanwhile, the witnesses remained huddled today outside the court, saying little. One even denied she was here for this case, an indication of how fraught with danger this whole exercise is.

Sources said that besides testifying on the divide and the tension in their village after the Godhra train attack, they have also revealed another important motive for rioters to ensure that fleeing Muslim families—like Bilkis’s—never returned home. The attackers had threatened to acquire properties owned by Muslims and after the riots, even grabbed their abandoned land and houses.

The witnesses have, sources say, given at least one specific example of this—of how a large plot in Randhikpur was grabbed by one of the prime accused in the massacre.

—with Chitrangada Choudhary in Mumbai