Sunday, November 25, 2012

NARODA PATIA CASE: Langado ran riot, then bragged


Gujarat EDN
TOI 31AUG2012

Later Claimed Innocence Saying He Had Muslim Wife

TIMES NEWS NETWORK


Ahmedabad: Among the 32 held guilty for killing 97 people at Naroda Patia in the 2002 post-Godhra, Suresh Dedawala alias Richard alias Langado faced maximum charges. Langado is convicted of rape and murder along with other charges like criminal conspiracy and member of unlawful assembly indulging into rioting and arson. This may invite maximum punishment for him along with few others who accompanied him in the killing spree and sexual assault, as the special court is to pronounce punishment in the case on Friday.
    Sixty-three eye-witnesses named Langado in 10 incidents of murder and sexual assault on that fateful day on February 28, 2002. Five years later, he was caught on camera in a sting operation, bragging about his ‘heroics’.
    After being implicated in so many acts of violence against the minority community, he took refuge in a relationship with a Muslim woman. He told the court during arguments that he would never participate in riots, as his wife Seema, is a Muslim. It was also submitted on his behalf that he was falsely implicated because Muslims in the neighbourhood did not like him marrying a girl from their community.
    The charges framed by the special court describe how he led a mob that burnt alive Zarina, Nasim, Khairun, Bilkis, Sharif, Iqbal and Salim. He was also charged with killing three children. Eyewitness accounts also accuse him of torching seven of Abdul Majid’s family alive in their house. He along with Babu Bajrangi, who too has been held guilty, bragged on camera of slitting open the belly of pregnant Kauserbanu and bringing the fetus out.
Will truth about Kauserbanu’s
death come out?
    
The judgment in the Naroda Patia case could throw light on the most horrific tale of the massacre – the death of pregnant Kauserbanu. Bajrangi and Suresh Langado were charged for slitting her belly and killing the fetus with sword after bringing it out. The duo admitted to this in their extra-judicial statement in a sting operation.
    While witnesses reiterated before the court that Kauserbanu was killed in the most dreaded manner, the medical evidence were quite contradictory. The medical officer told the court that he found the fetus in the womb, when he conducted a postmortem on Kauserbanu’s remains.