India's top court has asked for a new investigation into one of the country's worst religious riots, a rights advocate said Thursday. About 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed when Hindu mobs rampaged through Muslim neighborhoods, towns and villages in the western state of Gujarat in February-April 2002. The state government was and still is controlled by Hindu nationalists who have been repeatedly accused of not doing enough to stop the violence - and at times stoking it. Officials in Gujarat say they did everything they could to quell the rioting. But India's Supreme Court on Wednesday appointed a five-member team - two retired police officers from outside Gujarat and three still serving in the state police - to investigate several of the most deadly riots, said Teesta Setalvad, founder of Citizens for Justice and Peace, a group working with riot victims. The court did not publicize its decision or give a reason for Wednesday's ruling, which came in response to a petition filed by Setalvad's group and the National Human Rights Commission in 2002. The team is supposed to submit its report within three months, Setalvad said. The riots were triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a train packed with Hindu devotees. Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims, but the cause of the blaze remains unclear. The religious violence was among India's worst since its independence from Britain in 1947. The Supreme Court has in the past criticized the state's allegedly lenient handling of Hindus accused of killing Muslims. “There has been a tremendous amount of delay in this matter,” Setalvad said, adding that “evidence was not properly taken and the state protected the accused.” “Now the victims and survivors will get a serious hearing.” Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India's billion people, and Muslims - who at 14 percent form the country's largest religious minority - have been largely peaceful since independence. There have been sporadic bouts of violence like the Gujarat riots, however. __
