DNA Tests Ordered For Bodies in India

New Delhi, India - A court in northwestern India has ordered DNA testing to determine the identities of more than 20 bodies discovered in a mass grave in the state of Gujarat. Residents who uncovered the remains have said they belong to Muslims killed in religious rioting in February 2002.

A Gujarat high court judge said samples of the remains should be collected by state officials and the Central Bureau of Investigation in the presence of the victims' relatives, the Press Trust of India news agency reported. The judge said the remains should be handed over to the villagers for a proper burial after results of the DNA tests are announced.

A local police official, J.K. Bhatt, said two people had been arrested for illegally digging at the site of the mass grave in Lunawada, the Associated Press reported. "It is still not clear whether the bodies were buried by relatives during chaos of the riots or they were dumped by rioters," he said. "We are investigating."

The state police chief, A.K. Bhargava, later said that the families of those killed in the riots were never told whether their relatives were buried in the grave but that the bodies had been "legally accounted for." Bhargava said the bodies had been dug up now to create a sensation.

In 2002, the state of Gujarat experienced a wave of religious rioting that began when about 60 Hindu pilgrims were killed in an attack on a train. Hindu nationalists blamed Muslims for the attack, and in retaliation mobs of Hindu extremists went on a rampage, killing more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.

Some of the dead were buried in mass graves similar to the one uncovered in Lunawada -- some dug by family members of the victims and others by the attackers.

Human rights groups have accused the Bharatiya Janata Party, then the ruling party in Gujarat, of essentially ignoring the killings carried out by its Hindu extremist allies. At the time of the riots, the BJP was also the head of the ruling national coalition.

The Indian Supreme Court also has criticized the state's lenient handling of Hindus accused of killing Muslims.

"My brother was killed in the riots," Sheikh Bhikubhai, a villager, told the Associated Press. "Police took away the body for postmortem but never returned the body. He, too, may be buried in this grave."

At Lunawada, about 110 miles southwest of the state capital, Ahmadabad, at least 40 people were killed during the riots and nearly half were buried in the mass grave uncovered by the villagers, police chief Bhargava said.