Ahmedabad 2008 blasts: 38 convicts awarded death penalty, 11 get life term

A special court here on Friday awarded death penalty to 38 convicts and sentenced 11 others to life imprisonment in the 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts case, which had claimed 56 lives and left over 200 injured.

This is for the first time that so many convicts have been handed down death sentence by any court at one go. In January 1998, a TADA court in Tamil Nadu had awarded capital punishment to all 26 convicts in the case of assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The pronouncement of the quantum of punishment in the over 7,000 page judgment by judge AR Patel came nearly 14 years after the deadly blasts. 

The court termed the case as the rarest of rare. The court had convicted 49 persons and acquitted 28 others in the case on February 8. 

As many as 21 explosions had ripped through the city on July 26, 2008 within a span of 70 minutes. These 38 persons were convicted under the IPC Sections 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Eleven others were held guilty for criminal conspiracy and under various sections of the UAPA, he said.

The court imposed a fine of Rs 2.85 lakh on 48 convicts and of Rs 2.88 lakh on another one. It also awarded compensation of Rs 1 lakh to the kin of those who died in the blasts, Rs 50,000 to those who were seriously injured and Rs 25,000 to those who received minor injuries.