Gujarat skeletons: Court allows lab change

The Gujarat High Court Thursday gave permission to the CBI to send the skeletal remains of post-Godhra riot victims found at the Lunawada mass grave site to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) instead of Red Hill Laboratory (both located in Andhra Pradesh).

Justice C K Buch passed the orders following a CBI petition to allow the CDFD to conduct the tests.  Copies of the results of the tests should be sent to both the court and the state government, Buch ruled.

The CBI said it had collected nine boxes of skeletal remains of the riot victims from the mass grave site and a tenth box contained blood samples of the kin of victims. These blood samples would also be tested, CBI said.

'Identities of bodies in grave known' 

The court also observed that as the boxes containing samples were sealed and yet to be sent for testing, they could not be handed over to relatives.

The High Court had on December 29 asked the CBI and Central Forensic experts from AIIMS to oversee the digging of bodies from the grave, and ordered that the remains be sent to to the Red Hill Laboratory for testing. 

But after exhuming 20 bodies and collecting the DNA samples of 55 people for matching, the CBI moved a petition before the High Court seeking permission to send the samples to the CDFD instead of Red Hill Laboratory.

 Gujarat Riots: complete coverage