Ahmedabad: Riot victims of the infamous Naroda Patia massacre today (Dec 12, 2003) alleged before the two-man commission probing Godhra train carnage and the aftermath riots, that majority community mobs had "raped and burnt to death several Muslim women" and destroyed homes.

Deposing before Justice (retired) G T Nanavati and Justice (retired) K G Shah of the two-man panel, one of the victims also claimed to have seen the alleged barbaric killing of a pregnant woman Kausar Bano, whose "stomach was slit open, foetus removed, whipped over the tip of the sword and later flung away" by miscreants during post-Godhra riots.

The victim Zareena Sheikh, staying in Hussainnagar in the area told the panel that she was a witness to Kausar Bano's ordeal and when she tried to flee the spot, miscreants even attacked her with swords, tore off her clothes and thrashed her with sticks on the head.

"We fled towards the Gopinath society to escape the fury of a mob, which was on a rampage, burning people by dousing kerosene and petrol. I handed over my daughter to a man and jumped off the wall of the society. But not being acquainted with the area, I landed up in front on the mob, which had slit open Kausar Bano's stomach, removed the foetus and rotated it on the tip of the sword," Shiekh alleged.

"Seeing this I fled, only to be attacked by the mob and later fell unconscious after receiving a blow on my head. It was on the terrace of a house in the society where my brother-in-law took me, I regained consciousness," she said, in a voice choked with emotions.

PTI