Bombing justice done, India awaits riots reckoning

MUMBAI, Aug 3 (Reuters)

India ended an epic trial this week which saw nearly 100 people, mostly Muslims, convicted for bombing Mumbai, but the Muslim victims of the communal riots which triggered the attacks say they have yet to receive justice.

Fourteen years after the blasts which killed 257 people, the judge delivered his final sentence in the case on Tuesday.

But if justice ground slowly in the Mumbai blasts case, it ground to a halt when it came to the communal riots which preceded the bombings, where around 900 people, two-thirds of whom were Muslims, were killed.

Politicians indicted by a judicial inquiry for inciting Hindu mobs have gone on to win elections and policemen accused of shooting dead Muslims from "point-blank and in cold blood" were either acquitted or never brought to trial.

"We were praying in the mosque when police barged in and started firing," said Farukh Mapkar, who was shot in the back. "The policemen were brutal. they didnt even spare a boy who was trying to run away. They shot him from point-blank range." "It's been 14 years, it will be 24 years and still justice will not be done," he said.

"There's no justice for us because we are Muslims?"

Senior communist Sitaram Yechuri says it is an example of a double standard that undermines India's secular democracy, when the "majority terrorism" of the Hindu mob is not punished with the same zeal as the "minority terrorism" of the Muslim bomber.