Gujarat Riots Convict Maya Kodnani Can Call Amit Shah For Alibi To Court

Ahmedabad: Maya Kodnani, a former Gujarat minister sentenced to jail for the 2002 riots, can call Amit Shah as her witness, a special court has said. Ms Kodnani wants the BJP Chief in court to try and establish that she was not at the scene of a deadly incident of communal violence in which she is one of the main accused.

A judge on Wednesday said 14 people including Mr Shah "can be summoned at relevant and appropriate stage of trial".

Ms Kodnani, a gynaecologist, was sentenced to 28 years in jail for a leading role in the Naroda Patiya massacre, one of the worst episodes in the three-day riots. She has been out on bail since July 2014.

Nearly 100 Muslims were killed in Naroda Patiya. The case in which she has asked to call Amit Shah as a defence witness involves Naroda Gam next door, where 11 Muslims were killed.

The former minister claims she was not present when the incident took place on February 28, a day after the Godhra train burning that triggered the riots.

She has told the court that Mr Shah, a legislator, can vouch for her presence at the state assembly at the time of the Naroda killings and later at the Sola Civil Hospital where bodies of the Godhra train victims were brought. She claims she then went to the nursing home she ran in Ahmedabad.

To prove this, she wants to summon - besides Mr Shah - former BJP lawmaker Amrish Patel, then superintendent of civil hospital Anil Chaddha, the staff of her hospital and a man whose child was allegedly born at her hospital that day.

The Naroda Gam massacre was one of the nine major Gujarat riot cases investigated by a Special Investigation Team.

Ms Kodnani was Gujarat's minister for women and child development between 2007 and 2009 and is the highest-profile figure to be convicted in connection with the riots. Witnesses told the court that she handed out swords to rioters, exhorted them to attack Muslims and at one point fired a pistol.