Court convicts 12 in Gujarat riots case

File photo of police officers standing outside burning property, destroyed during rioting, in the village of Chota Udaipur 225 kms south ofAhmedabad.

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A court convicted 12 Hindu men on Friday in connection with the gang-rape of a pregnant Muslim woman and the murder of her family in a trial seen as key to winning justice for victims of one of India's worst religious riots.

Human rights groups say about 2,500 people, most of them Muslims, were hacked, beaten or burned to death in Gujarat after a suspected Muslim mob burnt alive 59 Hindu activists and pilgrims inside a train in February 2002.

Among the closely watched Gujarat riot trials was the "Bilkis Bano" case viewed as testing whether justice can be delivered to hundreds of other Muslim women sexually assaulted during the riots.

Bano, her lawyers say, was three months pregnant in early March 2002 when she was gang-raped and 12 of her family members, including her three-year-old daughter, were burned to death by a mob as they fled their village in Gujarat.

In 2004 the Supreme Court moved the "Bilkis Bano case" trial to Maharashtra in response to pleas that a fair trial was impossible in Gujarat, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.

Officials say 4,252 riot-related cases were registered in Gujarat, but police in Gujarat dropped more than 2,000 for lack of evidence.

The Supreme Court had also slammed the Gujarat government for failing to protect Muslims and compared its chief minister Narendra Modi to the Roman emperor Nero, said to have played the lyre while Rome burned.

On Friday, a special court in Mumbai found guilty 13 men charged with a variety of crimes from rape and gang rape to murder and destruction or falsification of evidence.

"The court convicted 13 people, but one ... of them is now dead," R.K. Shah, public prosecutor in the case, told Reuters.

The court will read out the sentences on Monday.

The convicted included a policeman charged with recording a false complaint. Five policemen and two doctors were acquitted.

(Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee)