Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court yesterday commuted the death penalty awarded by a lower court to 11 convicts in the 2002 Godhra train burning case into life imprisonment.

The HC upheld the conviction of 20 other people who were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court which had in 2011 convicted the 31 people of murder and conspiracy. The special court had acquitted 63 others due to lack of evidence, which notably included prime accused Maulana Umarji.

The HC refused to change the lower court’s verdict. The trial at the special court began in June 2009 with the framing of charges against 94 accused of whom  63 were acquitted. The court had also ruled that a criminal conspiracy had led to the train fire incident.

All 31 convicts would now spend their lives in prison for attempt to murder and criminal conspiracy in setting ablaze a coach of the Sabarmati  Express in 2002, the high court said in its order.

The train was returning with passengers from the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya that had been demolished in 1992. As many as 59 pilgrims, returning from Ayodhya were charred to death when a mob attacked the train and torched the S6 coach near Godhra railway station in February 2002. The incident triggered communal riots across Gujarat in which more than 1,000 people were killed.

Even after the special court delivered its verdict in February 2011, some of the accused were nabbed and put on trial.

Earlier this week, the HC rejected a petition by former lawmaker Ehsan Jafri’s widow challenging the clean chit given by SIT to then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi and other top politicians and bureaucrats for the riots.