Seven sentenced to life imprisonment convicted in 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots

Guwahati: Seven people have been sentenced for life on Friday who was found guilty of killing two men in an attack that is said to have triggered riots in Muzaffarnagar in Western Uttar Pradesh in 2013.

The riots was one of the worst communal clashes in the history of Uttar Pradesh that led to the killings of 66 people and left 50,000 displaced.

A local court on Wednesday convicted seven men for killing two men in Kawal village and rioting and awarded life sentence to the accused. The seven men given life imprisonment are Muzammil, Mujassim, Furkan, Nadeem, Janangir, Afzal and Ikbal.

According to the police report, two men of Kawal village were battered to death by five of the seven convicts over a minor altercation. The two other accused Afzal and Iqbal were summoned by the court later under the provisions of Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code when their complicity in the killings emerged during the trial.

The two districts saw the deployment of the Army in the state for the first time in the 20 years after the two killings in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli district after which the clashes broke out.

More than 6,000 cases have been filed after the riots that took place and nearly 1500 people were arrested. 175 chargesheets have been filed after the investigation by a Special Investigation Team.

A probe into the riots had given a clean chit to the then Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party government in Uttar Pradesh and blamed the local police and officials for misjudging and mishandling the situation.

BJP leaders from Western UP, some of whom are named in cases relating to the Muzaffarnagar riots approach the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for withdrawal of cases after his government came into power in UP in 2017. They demanded the withdrawal of the cases saying that the cases have been filed against those who they say had been falsely implicated. The Yogi Adityanath government has moved to withdraw 38 cases so far but those concerning BJP leaders continue to remain on track as of now.

Also Read: National News