Bhagalpur, Feb. 12 :    Bhagalpur, Feb. 12:  In the second conviction in the Bhagalpur riots case, 20 accused were handed prison sentences today. The verdict follows close on the heels of the first conviction on February 7, when 16 people were sentenced to life for the riots that killed more than 1,000 people and maimed double that number more than a decade ago. The third additional district and sessions judge of Bhagalpur, M.N. Singh, held 20 of the 36 accused guilty of involvement in the riots spread over a month in October 1989. They have been given varying jail terms for violating prohibitory orders and attacking the police in Bhagalpur city. The first ruling came on a case relating to the killing of 61 members of the minority community in Chanderi village on the outskirts of the city. Though much delayed, the two successive guilty verdicts have come as a relief to the ruling Congress-RJD combine which was committed to bringing the guilty to book. But the victims' families are dismayed by a 'term of jail which is not in proportion to the nature of the crime'. The life term for the 16 was 'outrageous', they said, asserting the guilty should have been given a death sentence. 'So far, they have pinpointed the jokers in a card game of communal politics and let the kings go,' said Bibi Badrunnisa, who lost five sisters and her mother-in-law in Chanderi on October 27-28, 1989. Several top politicians, policemen and administrative officials were allegedly involved in the riots.A commission set up to look into the role of the police indicted a DIG and a superintendent of police, but a second panel appointed to re-examine the issue exonerated them. Following the Chanderi conviction, members of the minority community alleged that they were receiving indirect threats from relatives of those sentenced. The government has posted a police picket in the village. A peaceful locality dominated by Muslims and Yadavs, Chanderi exploded in communal violence on October 27, 1989, when women and old men were sawed to death and dumped into a well, open fields and a pond filled with water hyacinth. Of the 40 houses rebuilt after the riots subsided, only 15 are inhabited. Occupants of the remaining houses have fled the area. Bibi Mustari, a 40-year-old housewife, is one of the few who stayed on. 'I challenged death and dared its agents to come to me,' she said. Thirty-five-year-old Mallika Begum, another survivor, lives alone. She was struck unconscious with a sharp weapon and dumped into a pond along with other women. An army officer who got her out of the pond married her, only to desert her two years ago after taking the compensation money. 'What is left to say? The riot has taken away everything and everyone in my family,' she said softly. But if Chanderi has been given a faint sense of justice, other villages have not got even that. In Logain, 127 people were killed and their bodies buried in the soil which was covered with cauliflower plants. All the bodies were found two months after the massacre. Eleven years on, no one has been held guilty. 'We had to depend overwhelmingly on circumstantial evidence,' said a prosecutor in one of the 320 cases out of the 800 registered by the police, for which chargesheets were filed. The total number of accused is over 2,000. Nothing seems to have changed. As one of those convicted was being led out of court today, he shouted: 'Jai Shri Ram'.