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"We were victims of politics," 63-year-old Shailesh Bhatt, a convict in the 2002 Bilkis Bano gangrape and murder case told news agency PTI on Tuesday, 16 August.
Speaking to reporters, Bhatt claimed that he was a local functionary of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) while his brother worked as a clerk at Panchmahals Dairy when they were arrested.
Another convict, Radheshyam Shah, also claimed that he and all others convicted in the case were innocent. "We were framed up because of our belief in certain ideology," Shah told reporters on Tuesday.
Bilkis Bano was 21 years old and five-months pregnant when she was sexually assaulted in Randhikpur village near Ahmedabad in March 2002, in the aftermath of the Godhra train burning incident. Her three children were also killed during the riots.
The trial in Bano’s case initially began in Ahmedabad but was transferred to Mumbai in 2004, after apprehensions surfaced over witnesses being harmed.
On Tuesday, 16 August, 10 of them walked out of the jail under the Gujarat government's remission policy, while one died during the trial.
(With inputs from PTI)
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