Wednesday, January 11 2006 10:31 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: They apparently did not get help from police when they were falling prey to communal orgy in Gujarat during the post-Godhra riots but today (Jan 11,2006) their skeletal remains are well protected in a Government circuit house at Godhra.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has posted its own security guards at the circuit house to guard the skeletal remains of 20 victims which were exhumed from a mass grave in Lunawada in Gujarat's Panchmahal district.

A petition to conduct DNA test of the skeletal remains will come up for hearing before the Gujarat High Court tomorrow (Jan 12,2006).

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.

However, the CBI moved a petition before the High Court after completing the exhuming of 20 bodies and collecting the DNA samples of 55 people for matching seeking a fresh direction from the Court that the samples be sent to Centre for DNA Engineering and Disgtics (CDED) instead of Andhra Pradesh's Red Hill Laboratory.

The petition was to come up for hearing yesterday but the matter was posted for January 12.

The CBI, while moving this petition, had stated that the Hyderabad-based CDED was more sophisticated in DNA sampling technique and besides this was a Central Government concern.

The DIG of CBI A K Vishwanathan had filed this application on behalf of the agency.

The CBI sources said that the relatives of the deceased did not come out openly to give their blood samples to the probe agency as they feared that the local police, which registered a case against 11 persons for digging the grave, would arrest them.

The skeletal remains of the 20 deceased will have to wait for some more time before they are finally put to rest in a grave.