Ahmedabad, May 25: A special court will on June 2 give its verdict in the 2002 Gulbarg society massacre, fourteen years after a mob burnt alive 69 people in a backlash to the Godhra train burnings.

The counsel of the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team, R.C. Kodekar, said special judge P.B. Desai had asked all 66 accused to be present in court on June 2 at 10.30am.

On February 22 this year, the apex court had instructed the special court to expedite the trial and give its verdict in three months. Since then, Desai has heard the case on a day-to-day basis.

On February 28, 2002, the day after the Godhra carnage, a mob had attacked Gulbarg society in the Meghaninagar area. Former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri was among the 69 people killed.

Of the 66 accused in the massacre, nine are in jail and four have died since the trial began in 2009, SIT counsel Kodekar said. The accused face charges of rioting and murder.

A doctor, Atul Vaidya, and a four-term BJP councillor, Bipin Patel, are the two high-profile accused in the case. Both were arrested after the SIT took over the probe in 2008 but are out on bail. Patel was a councillor at the time of the attack.

Tanvir Jafri, the son of the slain Congress leader, said: "We hope we will get justice and the accused will be punished for the horrendous crime they committed."

Sources said the SIT had relied on the testimony of 24 witnesses who have directly implicated all the accused. Their testimony is backed up by medical evidence and other circumstances leading to the incident.

According to the SIT, 39 charred bodies were recovered from the scene, a clear indication that they were burnt alive. Petrol and kerosene cans, lethal weapons, swords and lathis were also found. The missing people are presumed dead.

Ehsaan Jafri's widow Zakia had filed a case against then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and others for allegedly orchestrating the riots. An SIT that probed the case gave Modi a clean chit in 2012.

In 2014, on a challenge from Zakia, a metropolitan magistrate upheld the SIT report, saying there was no material evidence against the accused.

Zakia then again challenged the order, this time in the high court. The matter is pending.