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The verdict is the latest in more than a dozen prosecutions arising from the riots, and the first since Mr. [Narendra Modi] became prime minister. The judge did not implicate officials who were working under Mr. Modi's authority at the time, and the ruling rejected charges of conspiracy, casting the massacre instead as an episode of mob violence. But it was a reminder of a bloody episode that the prime minister has taken great pains to put behind him. On trips abroad, including one to the United States next week, Mr. Modi will probably face more questions about communal violence and the far-right agenda advanced by some in his party. A spokesman for Mr. Modi's party expressed satisfaction with the verdict because it did not point to official involvement. \"There was so much of a witch hunt against the current prime minister, and in that sense I am happy,\" said the spokeswoman, Shaina Nana Chudasama. \"If we move on as a society united, rather than distinguishing who is from B.J.P. or another party, we would be doing ourselves and the victims a great service.\" That effort may be damaged by Thursday's verdict. \"It suddenly brings back Mr. Modi of 2002, the person with dirty hands,\" said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, the author of a biography of the leader. \"It weakens Mr. Modi's claim to be the leader of a pluralistic India.\"

Eminent lawyer Ram Jethmalani made a plea on behalf of one of the accused. It led the Supreme Court agreeing to first hear an old plea from those named in Zakia's petition that the apex court should have heard them before asking the SIT to look into her complaint.

One of the incidents being investigated is the killing of up to 70 Muslims in a housing complex in Ahmedabad called the Gulbarg Society. People had taken shelter in the home of former MP, Ehsan Jafri, and as a Hindu mob surrounded the house, the politician is said to have called Mr [Narendra Modi] and directly asked him for help. Last year, an eyewitness to the incident, Imtiyaz Pathan, told The Independent that after Mr Jafri put down the phone he said that Mr Modi had told him there would be \"no deployment of police\" to save the besieged Muslims.

Crucially, Mr [Pathan] has testified he was present when the MP made a series of increasingly desperate calls for help, both to the local police and officials. As the rain of petrol and acid bombs being hurled at the three-storey house continued, Mr Jafri knew someone had to rescue them or else everyone would die. Finally the 72-year-old called Mr [Narendra Modi] directly. \"After calling Modi, Jafri was totally depressed,\" said Mr Pathan. \"When I asked him what happened, Jafri said 'There will be no deployment [of police].' In fact, he said that Modi had abused him, that he had used abusive language.\" \"He has also provided safety. Since Modi has come to power - forget about 2002 - there has not been a single incident of religious violence for seven-and-a-half years,\" he said. \"Today, a Muslim is more safe here than anywhere else in India. The average Muslim's income is double that anywhere else.\" The minister has certainly been quick to embrace India's major industries and has in return received warm words from many of its major tycoons, including Ratan Tata, who switched production of his 100,000 rupee Nano car to Gujarat after running into a labour dispute in West Bengal. Anil Ambani, one of the country's richest industrialists, last year said at a conference in Gujarat: \"[Modi] has done good for Gujarat and what will happen if he leads the nation?\" The backlash was swift. In more than 150 towns and almost 1,000 villages, violence erupted, overwhelmingly Hindu attacks on Muslim communi- ties. While there are some reports of Muslims attacking Hindus, few dispute that most victims were members of the minority community that make up 10 per cent of the state's population. The official death toll said 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed, though a number of rights groups estimate the toll at double that. The Indian Supreme Court likened Mr Modi to a \"modern-day Nero\", while the US government refused him a visa on the grounds that he had \"violated religious freedom\".

Soon after, the state of Gujarat joined the rush to jail Ms. Setalvad, recipient of one of India's highest honors, the Padma Shri Award. The state filed an affidavit in the Indian Supreme Court accusing her and her husband, Javed Anand, of perpetrating a \"colossal fraud\" -- to wit, raising $1.1 million \"in the name of riot victims\" only to siphon most of it to pay themselves exorbitant salaries and splurge on luxuries. The affidavit, while neglecting to mention that the Ford Foundation and other funders have found no evidence of financial wrongdoing, dwelled at length on the couple's \"conspicuous consumption,\" noting, for example, that they had eaten at a Subway, and, in boldface type, describing the purchase of sanitary napkins. In news outlets sympathetic to Mr. [Narendra Modi], however, the recent legal barrage is portrayed as an overdue comeuppance for an \"anti-Hindu hatemonger\" who uses foreign money to spread \"antinational propaganda.\" The public outcry, Mr. Modi's allies say, only proves that Ms. Setalvad is once again using her celebrity -- in Indian newspaper headlines she is often simply \"Teesta\" -- to shield herself from legitimate inquiries. Ms. Setalvad, 53, comes from eight generations of lawyers. Her grandfather, M.C. Setalvad, was India's first and longest-serving attorney general. Her father, Atul Setalvad, was a renowned lawyer in Mumbai. Ms. Setalvad said it was Watergate and \"All the President's Men\" that inspired her to pursue journalism instead. \"I still have the book,\" she said.

On Tuesday, Mr. [Narendra Modi] gave a speech condemning religious violence of any kind. Yet many Indian activists and others see the prime minister, whose political origins are in nationalist Hindu organizations, as the archvillain in the 2002 rioting that claimed hundreds of lives, mostly Muslim, in the state of Gujarat, where Mr. Modi was the chief minister. In the years since, as Mr. Modi's popularity has soared, two activists, Teesta Setalvad and her husband, Javed Anand, have been dogged in their efforts to bring him to trial, particularly in one case. During the 2002 riots, scores of Muslims in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city, took refuge in the home of Ehsan Jafri, a former member of Parliament. As Hindu mobs surrounded his house, Mr. Jafri called several powerful politicians for help. Some people claim that he called Mr. Modi, too, which would have been a natural thing for a senior politician to do under the circumstances, but there is no evidence to support this. These are not the first charges that the authorities in Gujarat have brought against Ms. [Setalvad]. She was once accused of coercing a witness into giving false evidence about the riots, a charge of which she was absolved by India's Supreme Court. The state also accused her of illegally exhuming the corpses of riot victims, an accusation the Supreme Court found \"100 percent spurious.\"

Probably the most famous \"clean chit\" was issued last year by a special investigation team to [Narendra Modi], clearing the way for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party to nominate him -- days before the advent of an inauspicious period in the Hindu calendar -- as its prime ministerial candidate for the general elections due this summer. The team, appointed by the Supreme Court, had investigated the allegations that Mr. Modi was complicit in the communal riots of 2002 in the western state of Gujarat, in which more than a thousand people were killed. He was then, as he is now, the state's chief minister. The manner in which the team and its chief, R.K. Raghavan, a retired police officer, conducted the investigation has been contentious. Now, a book by the journalist Manoj Mitta, \"The Fiction of Fact-Finding,\" accuses Mr. Raghavan of going to great lengths to shield Mr. Modi and of ignoring a wide spectrum of disturbing circumstantial evidence. Mr. Modi told the investigation team that he did not know the bodies were handed over to the V.H.P., which is actually a sibling of his own party. The two groups are affiliated with the Hindu nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, to which Mr. Modi still belongs.

Mr [Narendra Modi]'s supporters in the BJP, struggling to locate and gather around a charismatic leader with national clout, leapt on the ruling, saying their man had been cleared and that any obstacles to him becoming a candidate for prime minister in 2014 had been removed. This weekend, Mr Modi held a \"harmony fast\" in the company of a flurry of high-profile BJP leaders who rapidly made their way to Gujarat, wanting to be seen to siding with a potential winner. As we made our way around the fire-scorched ruins, Mr [Imtiyaz Pathan] recalled how the Muslim residents were for hours surrounded by a baying mob of Hindus. He said that as the situation worsened, Ehsan Jafri, a former MP, in whose house people had gathered for safety, picked up the phone and called Mr Modi directly and asked him to send help. \"After calling Modi, Jafri was totally depressed,\" said Mr Pathan. \"When I asked him what happened, Jafri said, 'There will be no deployment [of police].' In fact, he said that Modi had abused him, that he had used abusive language.\" After giving himself up to the gang in an attempt to try and \"buy\" the safety of the other residents, Mr Jafri was never seen again. It was his family who had sought to have the Supreme Court hear their petition. His widow, Zakia, told reporters this week: \"I am totally disappointed.\"