Sangh Parivar

AHMEDABAD (Reuters) - A court jailed nine Muslim men for life on Monday for the 2003 assassination of the former home minister of Gujarat.

Haren Pandya was a state legislator and senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when he was shot dead in his car as he was about to step out of the vehicle for a morning walk.

The nine men included Asghar Ali, who shot the 53-year-old politician and was subsequently arrested from Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city.

The court said they had conspired to kill Pandya and had links with Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir and is accused of carrying out attacks elsewhere in the country as well.

Two others were sentenced to seven years and another to five years for being a part of the plot.

Pandya, a popular Hindu nationalist leader, had been named by several witnesses as one of the instigators of anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002 that left at least 1,000 people, mainly Muslims, dead.

The 2002 riots erupted after 59 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive in a train in an incident blamed on a Muslim mob.

Human rights groups and opposition parties in Gujarat accuse the BJP -- India's main opposition party -- of having fuelled the riots, a charge it denies.