The other 20 people convicted were given life sentences in what presiding Judge P.R. Patel said was one or India's "rarest of rare" cases.

The sentencing ends the so-called Godhra train burning trial of 94 people that began in June 2009.

On Feb. 22, 63 of the defendants were acquitted when the court determined prosecutors failed to prove a conspiracy. Among those acquitted was Maulvi Umarji, a local politician whom prosecutors claimed was the leader of the arsonist mob.

The court, however, found 31 people guilty of being actively involved in stockpiling gasoline and burning the train carriage. The motive was "anger against the kar sevaks," the court said.

A kar sevak can refer to someone who often visits the historic Hindu holy site Ram Janmabhoomi, the former site of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The Babri Mosque was destroyed in 1992 when a political rally developed into a riot involving 150,000 people.

The 31 convicted suspects will appeal their sentence and have 90 days to do so.

"It (the punishment) is very difficult to swallow," defense counsel I. M. Munshi said. "We will definitely appeal against the verdict in the High Court. Till the High Court confirms the judgment, it cannot be implemented."

The trial of the February 2002 tragedy has been highly emotional because of religious sensitivities. A special court was set up in the Sabarmati Central Jail -- Gujarat's largest prison -- for security reasons.

In Godhra City, in the state of Gujarat, the Sabarmati Express train was returning from the city of Ayodhya, a holy place for Hindus, when it was forcibly stopped and attacked by a large Muslim mob. During the attack, 59 Hindu pilgrims, including women, children and elderly people, died in a fire when a car in the train was set ablaze.

The ensuing violence over 48 hours claimed the lives of nearly 800 Muslims and more than 250 Hindus. Around 520 people were reported missing and have since been declared dead.

Hundreds of mosques and Hindu temples, as well as three churches, were destroyed or damaged. Authorities also said hundreds of Muslim-owned businesses were damaged. Around 61,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus fled their homes and thousands of people were arrested in a police crackdown in the aftermath.

earlier related report
Pollution a threat to China's growth
Beijing (UPI) Mar 1, 2011 - China's environment minister warned that pollution in the country poses a threat to long-term economic growth.

In remarks posted on the ministry Web site, Environment Minister Zhou Shengxian said, "Natural resources are shrinking, degenerating and drying up. Ecological and environmental decay has become a bottleneck and a serious obstacle to our economic and social development."

Zhou is pushing for environmental protection to be a key component of China's new Five Year Plan (2011-15) to be debated during the National People's Congress set to begin Saturday.

"If our homeland is destroyed and we lose our health, then what good does development do?" Zhou wrote.

In January, for example, state-run news agency Xinhua reported that 200 children in eastern China had elevated lead levels. While there are laws prohibiting factories from being located within 1,600 feet of residential areas, the affected children lived close to battery factories.

"Environmental concerns will play a major role in massaging the way the economy is going to grow in the 12th five-year plan," said Zhang Jianyu, head of China's environmental defense fund, the Financial Times reports.

China, the world's top emitter of greenhouse gases, emits 6.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, U.N. statistics indicate.

The country's new five-year plan is expected to include targets for reducing energy intensity and carbon dioxide intensity as well as to address a wider range of pollutants than previous plans.

Zhang said the plan would be a challenge because China will be moving from an export and investment-oriented approach toward "a more stable, balanced, sustainable approach."

On Sunday, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao lowered the target for average gross domestic product growth to 7 percent from 7.5 percent, saying there was a need for slower, cleaner growth.

"We must not any longer sacrifice the environment for the sake of rapid growth and reckless rollouts, as that would result in unsustainable growth featuring industrial overcapacity and intensive resource consumption," said Wen in an Internet chat reported on by state media.

While China's previous five-year plan had a growth target of 7.5 percent, the economy actually grew 11.1 percent from 2006-10.

Under that plan, China sought to reduce energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product by 20 percent compared with 2005 levels by the end of 2010.

But as a last-ditch effort to achieve those pollution-reduction targets, some local governments had resorted to enforced blackouts.

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