Ahmedabad, Aug 22: Nearly 500 Muslims reported missing in the Gujarat riots may have actually been killed because there is no trace of them six months later, private groups have said. Officials say more than 1,000 people died in a wave of revenge killings in Gujarat after a mob burnt a train with 59 Hindu activists in in February. Human rights groups put the toll from the riots at more than 2,000.
"Five hundred people missing after the riots have all been killed," said Mohsin Qadri, head of Citizen Relief Service, a charity group in Gujarat.

The recovery of two skeletons earlier this week from a drain in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city that bore the brunt of the violence, is proof that the people said to be missing were slaughtered and their bodies concealed, they said.
The government said that 377 people went missing after the riots on the basis of complaints filed with police. But non-governmental organisations peg the number at around 500.

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"The recovery (of the skeletons) only underlines what we have been saying all through," Qadri said.
The skeletons recovered earlier this week from the Muslim-dominated old quarter of Ahmedabad were those of two Muslim youth who went missing on February 28.

Authorities have so far declined to add the number of missing to the list of those killed during the riots, saying some could still be alive outside Gujarat. Bureau Report