Rajesh Shah: A Mumbai court convicted 12 men of gang-rape, murder and fabricating evidence in the killing of 14 people during one of India's worst religious riots.

Their sentences will be announced Monday. All 12 sobbed when Mumbai Sessions Court Judge U.D. Salvi read out the verdict Friday, and said they would appeal the convictions in a higher court. "We were not involved in the rape," said Ramesh Chandan, one of the defendants.

Mumbai Sessions Court Judge U.D. Salvi acquitted seven other defendants, including five policemen and a husband-and-wife doctor team. Eleven of the convicted men face possible death sentences for gang-rape, murder and conspiracy in the case, which dates back to the 2002 Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat state.

The 12th, a policeman, was found guilty of fabricating and destroying evidence and faces up to 10 years in prison. Bilkis Yakub, then 21 and pregnant, was gang-raped along with her young daughter and another relative on March 3, 2002.

While the reasons for the train blaze remain unclear, right-wing Hindu groups claim the fire was started by a Muslim mob. The resulting religious riots were among India's worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.

Judge Salvi said evidence from the Central Bureau of Investigation, India's equivalent of the United States' FBI, helped decide the case. He said Yakub's testimony and the eyewitness account of a boy who was 8 years old when the incident took place were also factors in the decision.

The top court has also accused the state of leniency in handling of Hindus accused of killing Muslims. Gujarat's government has consistently denied both accusations.

Yakub told the court she saw the men rape her daughter and relative, and then witnessed them burying the bodies on the outskirts of her village. She said the men had left her for dead.