A Gujarat court has acquitted for want of evidence all the 26 people accused in connection with a gang rape and the murder of over a dozen Muslims in separate incidents in Kalol during the 2002 riots.

The witness accounts contained contradictions and failed to support the prosecution’s arguments, additional sessions judge Leelabhai Chudasama said on Friday while delivering the verdict in Halol, Panchmahal district.

The acquittals come eight months after 11 lifers, convicted of gang-raping a pregnant Bilkis Bano and killing seven members of her family during the 2002 violence, had their sentences remitted by the Gujarat government and were released. The matter is before the Supreme Court.

Of the 39 accused in the Kalol atrocities, 13 had died during the two-decade pendency of the case.

On March 1, 2002, more than 2,000 people from two communities had clashed with sharp weapons and inflammable objects in Kalol city, Gandhinagar district, according to the FIR.

They vandalised and burnt down shops. A man injured in police firing was being taken to hospital when the vehicle was torched and he was burnt alive.

Another man was attacked and killed while he was coming out of a mosque and his body was burnt inside the mosque. In another incident, 38 people fleeing Delol village and coming towards Kalol were attacked, and 11 of them were burnt alive. A woman was gang-raped while she and others were trying to escape, the FIR says. The prosecution examined 190 witnesses and furnished 334 documents.