As many as 38 of the 49 convicts linked to the Indian Mujahideen (IM) have been sentenced to death and the remaining to life imprisonment. The lawyers of the 49 convicts in the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts case said they would move the Gujarat High Court to appeal against the guilty verdict awarded to them by a special court, Friday.

HM Sheikh, one of the defence lawyers, said that the court should not have given the judgment based only on circumstantial evidence and statements of some convicts.

“The judgment runs into 7,000 pages and has not yet been made available to us,” the lawyer said, adding that they wanted to study the judgment and formulate their future legal plan.

Another defence lawyer, Khalid Shaikh, pleaded for mercy for his clients. “We expected the court to show leniency and award a less harsh punishment,” he stated.