A special court in Gujarat on Thursday acquitted all 68 persons, including former state minister and BJP leader Maya Kodnani, in the 2002 Naroda Gam massacre case. A total of 86 accused were named in the case, but 18 of them died in the intervening period.
All accused were facing charges under Sections 302 (murder), 307 (attempt to murder), 143 (unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 148 (rioting armed with deadly weapons), 120 (B) (criminal conspiracy), and 153 (provocation for riots), among others under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Eleven persons were killed in communal violence in the Naroda Gam area of the Ahmedabad city on February 28, 2002, during a bandh called to protest the Godhra train burning a day before in which 58 passengers, mostly Karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, were killed.
The trial started in 2010 and went on for nearly 13 years with six judges successively presiding over the case, special prosecutor Suresh Shah was quoted as saying by PTI.
In September 2017, senior BJP leader (now Union home minister) Amit Shah appeared as a defence witness for Kodnani, who had requested the court to summon him to prove her alibi that she was present in the Gujarat Assembly and later at the Sola Civil Hospital and not at Naroda Gam where the massacre took place.
Among the evidence produced by the prosecution was the video of a sting operation carried out by journalist Ashish Khetan as well as call details of Kodnani, Bajrangi and others during the relevant period.
Kodnani, who was a minister in the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government, was convicted and sentenced to 28 years in jail in the Naroda Patiya riot case where 97 people were massacred. She was later discharged by the Gujarat High Court.
The massacre at Naroda Gam was one of the nine major 2002 communal riots cases investigated by the SIT and heard by special courts.
(with inputs from PTI)
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