India's highest court ordered on Monday a retrial of a high-profile murder case after 20 Hindus were acquitted of slaying 12 Muslims during religious riots in Gujarat state in 2002.
The Supreme Court ordered Gujarat's Hindu nationalist government to take up the issue of a retrial through state prosecutors. In a rare move, it also ordered the new trial be moved from Gujarat to neighbouring Maharashtra state.
"This judgement is a victory for justice, secularism and the Indian constitution," said Mihir Desai, a lawyer for survivor and chief witness Zahira Sheikh, 20.
The Best Bakery case, named after the shop where the killings happened, has come to symbolise the lack of major progress in bringing to account those responsible for the riots in which rights groups say about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, died.
The riots broke out after 59 Hindu pilgrims were burned to death in an attack on a train.
Sheikh had appealed to the Supreme Court for a retrial outside Gujarat after saying she had been intimidated into changing her testimony in the original case.
"This is a historic judgement. Retrials are very rare in India. And it's even rarer for a trial to be transferred on the basis of a statement by one witness," another of her lawyers, Aparna Bhat, said.
Senior Gujarat official K. Nityanandam said the government had yet to receive a copy of the order, but added no appeal was possible and it would have no choice but to implement the ruling.
Teesta Setalvad, editor of the magazine Communalism Combat and an activist helping riot victims, said she hoped the verdict would give fresh hope to survivors.