A local court in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar on Friday sentenced all seven people convicted for killing two youths in 2013, to life imprisonment, ANI reported. The court had on Thursday pronounced the seven men guilty of murdering two youths in Kawal village that year, an incident that triggered the Muzaffarnagar riots, which left 62 people dead.
Thousands lost their homes in the violence which polarised western Uttar Pradesh in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Several reports of sexual assault and abuse also emerged from Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts at the time.
District prosecution counsel Rajiv Sharma said on Thursday that Muzammil, Mujassim, Furkan, Nadeem, Janangir, Afzal and Iqbal were convicted for killing Sachin Singh and Gaurav Singh on August 27, 2013, and rioting. The court convicted the seven men after examining 10 prosecution witnesses in the case.
In January, the Adityanath-led government had directed the Muzaffarnagar district administration to withdraw 18 cases related to the 2013 riots in the region. The government issued the order a year after it sought the opinion of the district administration on 131 riot cases. As many as 89 of these cases were pending in court in January 2018, the month in which the state had sought the opinion of the district administration.
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