Dec. 28: The Congress-led Centre has asked the Gujarat government to urgently explain the mass grave at Panchmahal district amid allegations that state police had clandestinely buried victims of the 2002 riots there.

The CBI, acting on its own, has already sent a team from Mumbai to the site at Lunawada village where an NGO dug up 21 skeletons yesterday with help from riot victims’ relatives. Forensic experts from Gandhinagar, too, have got working at the site.

Home ministry officials said the outcome of the CBI and forensic probes, which will include DNA tests, could be damaging for Gujarat’s BJP regime, headed by Narendra Modi.

Earlier, Gujarat High Court accepted a plea for a CBI probe and DNA testing and fixed the hearing for Thursday. The petition was filed by rights activist Teesta Setalvad, whose Citizens for Peace and Justice helped with the digging, and Ameena Habib Rasool, who lost her son in the riots.

The CBI sent a team without waiting for instructions from Delhi or a request from Gujarat, a source said. It wants to find out if the victims of the Bilkis Bano case were among those buried on the banks of the river Panam. Three officers led by a DIG have reached and more are on their way, a CBI source said.

“The CBI team will work in close co-ordination with the forensic experts. The next course of action could be a fresh FIR,” a senior agency official said. “All this depends a lot on what the central forensic science laboratory finds.”

Panchmahal collector Dinesh Brahmbhatt, who has reached Lunawada, said its distance from the site of the Bilkis Bano massacre was about 100 km. The skulls, bones and other remains are feared to be those of 21 members of a family who went missing after the Pandharwada carnage on March 1, 2002. Some 40 people are believed to have been killed.

Setalvad alleged that the state police today tried to intimidate the family of Gulambhai Kharat, a local villager who had helped the NGO find the grave.

“Gulambhai lost four members of his family during the Gujarat carnage. Around 5.30 pm today, a sub-inspector went to his house in the village and abused his wife Zaibunissa and threatened to lock her up for her husband’s role in finding the grave. We have lodged a complaint at Lunawada police station,” she said.

“The police claim that the site is a graveyard. But it is on a riverbank surrounded by ravines. The community graveyard is 1 km from there in Lunawada village on a 250-acre plot.” State police chief A.K. Bhargav said the police, hospital and civic authorities in Lunawada have detailed records of the burials. Each body was buried after post-mortem.

But Setalvad, who visited the site today, said ordinary clothes were found on the skeletons. If the post-mortem were properly done, the doctors would have covered the bodies with white cloth “in accordance with law’’.