MUMBAI, Jan 21: A Mumbai court sentenced 11 men to life imprisonment on Monday after they were convicted of gang-rape and murder in the deaths of 14 people during one of India’s worst religious riots.

The prosecution had asked for the death penalty for the 11 men for their roles in the crimes, which date back to the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat state. A 12th man, a policeman, was sentenced to three years in prison for fabricating and destroying evidence.

All 12 said they would appeal the decision to a higher court.

Bilkis Yakub, then 21 and pregnant, was gang-raped while travelling with her young daughter and another relative on March 3, 2002.

Bilkis’s daughter and the relative were among the 14 people killed when a mob attacked them with stones, swords and iron rods.

“This judgment does not mean the end of hatred but it does mean that somewhere, somehow justice can prevail,” Bilkis told reporters in New Delhi. She said she still feared to return to Gujarat. Mumbai Sessions Court Judge U.D. Salvi rejected the call for the death penalty, saying the men jointly committed the acts as part of a mob and it was difficult to separate their individual crimes.

Prosecution lawyer R.K. Shah had earlier argued for the maximum sentence.

“This was a pre-planned attack. They were her neighbours, but despite Bilkis’s pleas they raped the women and snatched and killed her daughter,” said Shah. “It was a heinous crime.”

On Friday Salvi acquitted seven other defendants, including five policemen and a husband-and-wife doctor team.

About 1,000 people most of them Muslims were killed during the Gujarat riots, which were believed to have been triggered by an attack on a railway car in which 60 Hindus burned to death while returning from a religious pilgrimage. While the reasons for the train blaze remain unclear, right-wing Hindu groups claim it was started by a Muslim mob.

The resulting religious riots were among India’s worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.

The trial began in 2005 after the Supreme Court transferred the case from Gujarat to Mumbai, the capital of neighbouring Maharashtra state, amid protests by human rights groups who have long accused Gujarat’s Hindu-nationalist state government of protecting the rioters and police officials. Critics claim they did little to control the carnage.—AP