The source explained that, very often, the accused is from the same locality as the victim but the victim knows him just by his first name. “Unfortunately, this is not sufficient to establish the identity of the accused,” he said.

SIT officials believe that almost all the victims who have been missing since 2002 can now, under law, be presumed to be dead. The law says that any person who has been missing for seven years should be declared as dead.

The source said that may of the victims who had lost kin in the riots had already taken the compensation offered to the next of the kin of the deceased. “In some cases, even the photographs of those who have gone missing have been destroyed,” the source said. SIT officials, however, refuse to say whether anything can be done about the accused who have not been identified with certainty. An official close to the investigation team, however, said that there were only a few accused whose identities were not known with certainty.

“We will be investigating these cases and if they continue to remain unidentified, we will record them as ‘unidentified accused’ in our report,” the official said.

Vivek Vijayapalan/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication