Wednesday, December 28 2005 19:54 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Ahmedabad: The collector of Panchmahal district of Gujarat today (Dec 28, 2005) said that the local administration is aware about the identities of most of the bodies buried in the mass grave near Panam river at Lunavada village.

"We have an official list of about 34 riot victims who were killed in the area during the riots, of which only 28 of them were buried in the grave here", (Lunavada) District collector D H Brahmbhat told sources.

"Most of the bodies have been identified", he added. Saying that the list of all the 34 killed in the area were available with the police, municipality and the hospital where their post-mortems were performed.

"Of the 34 dead, some of the relatives of the (post-Godhra riot) victims had identified them. About 6 such bodies were identified so we buried the remaining 28 bodies in the grave", Brahmbhat said.

"Of the 28 buried bodies, eight of them were exhumed and in October 2002 and given to the relatives", he said adding, "it is not true that the administration is not co-operating with the riot-affected".

Brahmbhat said that now only 20 bodies, most of which were identified, remained in the grave.

The district collector also said that neither the administration nor the police had got any request (like the one they received in October 2002) from the relatives of riot victims to exhume the bodies.

"There are no pending requests to exhume bodies either with us or with the police", Brahmbhat said adding, "We are ready to help the relatives in event of any such request".