Eight persons accused of glorifying the last known case of sati in India were acquitted on Wednesday by a special court in Rajasthan’s Jaipur, reported PTI.

The practice of sati, which was banned in 1829, involved women being forcibly burnt alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

The last known case of sati was recorded on September 4, 1987, in Rajasthan, when a woman named Roop Kanwar was burnt on her husband’s funeral pyre.

In 1998, a total of 45 persons were booked for organising an event allegedly glorifying the incident and the practice of sati. This violated section 5 of the Commission of Sati Prevention Act, 1987, which prescribes the punishment for glorifying or promoting the practice.

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On Wednesday, the court acquitted eight of the 45 persons, giving them the benefit of the doubt, according to their lawyer Aman Chain Singh Shekhawat, The Indian Express reported.

“To prove the violation of section 5, section 3 [attempt to commit sati] needed to be proved,” Shekhawat was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “However, the prosecution, the investigation agency, could not prove section 3 itself, that sati took place. There was no material evidence which could prove that sati took place and that it was subsequently glorified.”

The acquitted persons are Mahendra Singh, Shrawan Singh, Nihal Singh, Jitendra Singh, Uday Singh, Dasrath Singh, Laxman Singh and Bhanwar Singh. They had already been granted bail in the case.

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Apart from them, 25 others were acquitted in the case in 2004 for want of evidence. Four others are absconding while the remaining eight have died.

After the court order, Kanwar’s brother Gopal Singh Rathore told The Indian Express: “Since the beginning we have been saying that she committed the act on her own and there was no incitement or abetment.”

He claimed that no family member had done “anything wrong” in the matter and said that the government had “not been able to prove anything in the courts in 40 years”.