India party members charged over Muslim violence

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL56353.htm

AHMEDABAD, India, April 19 (Reuters) - Indian police on Monday charged 20 people, including two members of the ruling Hindu nationalist party and six policemen, with involvement in the murder and rape of Muslims during riots two years ago.

The charges, filed a day before the country begins voting in a five-stage general election, came as a second major indictment in just over a week of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) role in the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in more than a decade. snip

The 20 were charged in the western state of Gujarat in what has been called the Bilkis case, after Bilkis Yakub Rasool, a pregnant Muslim woman who was gang raped as she tried to flee a Hindu mob in early 2002.

Twelve of Rasool's relatives, including her three-year-old daughter, were burnt to death by the mob, A. A. Sheikh, counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation, told Reuters.

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