Naroda Gam case: Kodnani urges court to summon Amit Shah

Former state minister Maya Kodnani has moved the Special SIT court for summoning BJP chief Amit Shah and 13 others to prove her alibi in the Naroda Gam massacre case, involving killings of 11 people.
Sentenced to 28 years in jail in another Gujarat riot case of Naroda Patiya massacre but presently out on bail, Kodnani has urged the court to call Shah and others as her defense witnesses to prove that she was not present at the scene of the crime involving Naroda Gam massacre on February 28, 2002.
The plea was made on Thursday to Special SIT Judge P B Desai.

As Kodnani's counsel sought time till Monday to submit the reasons to justify the relevance of the plea at this stage of trial, Judge Desai slated Monday for further hearing to decide if the plea can be admitted.
Through her application, Kodnani, a gynaecologist, urged the court to issue summons to Shah to prove that she met him in state assembly in Gandhinagar and then at Sola Civil hospital here, where bodies of Godhra train massacre were being brought on February 28, 2002.
She also claimed in her plea that she had then gone to her nursing home and then to the main civil hospital in Asarwa area of the city.

To prove her claim, she also sought summoning of 13 other persons, including former BJP MLA Amrish Patel, erstwhile Civil Hospital Superintendent, Dr Anil Chaddha and various staffers of her hospital besides a person whose child, she claimed, was born in her hospital that day.

Naroda Gam massacre is one of the nine major riots cases investigated by the Special Investigation Team. Eleven persons of the minority community were killed in Naroda Gam in 2002 riots during a bandh call given to protest the Godhra train burning incident.
A total of 82 persons are facing trial in the case. The Supreme Court had in September last year given the special court six months to conclude the trial.

Kodnani has been sentenced to 28 years in jail in another riot case of Naroda Patiya, in which 97 people, mostly of the minority community, were killed by a crowd.
Kodnani was a State Minister for Women and Child Development in erstwhile Chief Minister Narendra Modi's government.