Shah appears in court as witness for Maya Kodnani
18 Sept 2017 10:01 PM IST
Ahmedabad: BJP president Amit Shah on Monday appeared before a special court here as a defence witness for for ex-Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, an accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam riots case, and said that he had met her in the state Assembly in Gandhinagar on the day the incident took place.
Shah told special court judge P B Desai that he had later on February 28, 2002 had met Kodnani at the Sola Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, where bodies of 59 'karsevaks' killed in the Sabarmati Express train fire a day earlier had been brought to. The BJP chief, however, told the judge that he did not know where Kodnani went to from the hospital after the police escorted them for some distance away from it.
Both Shah and Kodnani were BJP MLAs in 2002.
Fifty-two-year-old Kodnani has been charged with offences including murder, attempt to murder, rioting and criminal conspiracy in the Naroda Gam case. In 2012, she was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in jail in the Naroda Patiya riots case in which 96 people were killed during the riots. She is at present out on bail.
Naroda Gam was one of the nine major 2002 communal riots cases investigated by a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT).
Eleven Muslims were killed in the Naroda Gam area on February 28, 2002, a day after 59 karsevaks returning to Gujarat from Ayodhya were killed in a fire inside a three-tier coach of the Sabarmati Express train near the Godhra railway station. A total of 82 people are facing trial in the case.
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