Maya Kodnani, former minister in the Narendra Modi government and an accused in the 2002 riot cases, was on Thursday sent to judicial custody after a local court rejected the application of the Special Investigation Team for extending police remand.Kodnani, who is an accused in the Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya case, in which over 106 people were killed during the post-Godhra riots, was produced in the court after her police custody ended today.
The acquittal of all 67 accused in the Naroda Gam case in which 11 members of a minority community were killed amounts to "murder" of justice and the verdict will only embolden rioters, said some of the survivors of the communal violence.
Social activist Teesta Setalvad on Wednesday welcomed the court's ruling in the 2002 Naroda Patiya violence case, which convicted 32 people including Bharatiya Janata Party MLA and former minister Maya Kodnani of murder and conspiracy.
Narendra Modi will find it impossible to wash away the bloodstains from Independent India's worst state-sponsored pogrom. His image will remain sullied no matter how many Sadbhavna campaigns he organises, says Praful Bidwai.
We present the full text of suspended Gujarat police official Sanjiv Bhatt's open letter to Chief Minister Narendra Modi:
The special trial court will pronounce the quantum of punishment for 32 convicts in the 2002 post-Godhra Naroda Patiya riots case on August 31.
While Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's moral argument has been severely weakened by the judgment, on the political turf he is unlikely to lose, or gain, from it. However, the story is not about politics but justice, says Sheela Bhatt
Gujarat High Court on Tuesday rejected applications by former state minister Maya Kodnani and two others against the decision of the trial court judge who had refused to recuse herself from Naroda Gaam riot case.
The designated judge hearing the Naroda Gaam rioting case of 2002 today reserved order on an application seeking her recusal from the case. Jyotsna Yagnik, who had earlier conducted trial in the Naroda Patiya massacre case and now also assigned the Naroda Gaam rioting case, on Monday decided to pronounce her order in the matter on January 11.
They were BJP corporator Maya Kodnani, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and others, the victim told the Nanavati Commission.
Some BJP workers in the area have expressed unhappiness over her candidature.
'My confidence in the Indian judiciary is absolute after I saw justice being delivered in Gujarat even when a BJP government was ruling the state. The Muslims of Gujarat believed that they will never get justice in a BJP-ruled state, but the facts are before all of us to make a judgment.'
A special court in Ahmedabad which acquitted all the 67 accused in the Naroda Gam post-Godhra riots case has criticised the probe conducted into it by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the Supreme Court, and said the evidence of the prosecution's witnesses was full of contradictions and could not be relied upon.
The Gujarat high court on Tuesday granted temporary bail to Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Babu Bajrangi, serving life sentence in the 2002 Naroda Patia massacre case, to undergo treatment for an eye ailment.
On a petition filed by former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, SIT judge P B Desai summoned Shah to appear before the court on September 18.
'I learnt today that Bilkis Bano had to change her house after these people were released as some of them lived in her vicinity.' 'This was an injustice to her, she had to do this under duress.'
Activist Teesta Setalvad on Monday recorded her statement before the CBI in connection with a case against her firm for alleged violation of FCRA.
The three of the total 16 accused were held guilty in an order pronounced on April 20.
Ahead of United States envoy Nancy Powell's meeting with Narendra Modi, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Wednesday hoped America will apply with regard to the Gujarat chief minister the standards consistent with its policies in dealing with issues like human rights.
'The SIT did not follow up with the CD of the phone call recordings that could have helped it find who were leading the mobs and where the calls of people involved in the rioting originated from and terminated.'
The Gujarat high court had on April 20 last year upheld the conviction of 12 out of the 29 accused who were pronounced guilty on various charges by the trial court and had acquitted 17 others, including former BJP minister Maya Kodnani.
While Jaitley posted his hard-hitting response to the opposition's move in Facebook, BJP fielded its spokesperson Meenakshi Lekhi, who is also a lawyer, to take on the Congress.
Where does one find a man who shows no bitterness or animosity towards Hindus, even after a frenzied Hindu mob burnt his house down?, Jyoti Punwani asks in this tribute to a truly extraordinary Indian.
There is a mixed reaction to the Naroda Patia verdict which was delivered on Wednesday in the special court in Ahmedabad, says Rigvedita Mahurkar.
'Afzal Guru was convicted of supporting the attack on India's Parliament. The Supreme Court said "the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded" to Guru.' 'Till we can think up similar justifications for hanging non-Muslims, I do not think we can delink terrorism from religion in our minds,' argues Aakar Patel.
The Modi government is just continuing old ideas with a new twist -- of interference in matters where the State should not venture, says Mango Indian.
"clean chit" given to the Bharatiya Janata party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi by a lower court in 2002 Gujarat riots.
His action after the Godhra train violence doesn't support the picture of an effective and no-nonsense deliverer of good governance, says Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay
'There are moments, and the hanging of Yakub Memon was one, where all of the gathered injustices are crystallised. Those gathered at the graveyard were not there to protest. They came to sympathise because they are also victims,' says Aakar Patel.
Lawyer and scholar Vinay Sitapati says the 'Get Modi' strategy largely misses the efforts to prosecute people evidently guilty of violence and murders in the Gujarat riots in favour of "a narrow quest to stop one man from becoming prime minister."
An accused D G Vanzara gets bail months after Modi emerges as PM and hails it is as a return of 'Achche Din' while the blind-folded lady justice, almost mocks the rest of us, by suggesting that nobody is guilty for the cold blooded killing of Ishrat Jahan, Kauser Bi and the 2,000 odd innocent people in Gujarat, says Shehzad Poonawala.
'It would be a folly on our part to believe that the KKK or its Indian version exists only as some dedicated organisation. Rather, the Indian KKK, much like the American counterpart, exists as a fragmented and amorphous collection of independent groups and individuals,' says Shehzad Poonawalla.
The letter, to maintain the current policy of denying Narendra Modi a visa to the United States, was released just as the BJP president arrived in Washington DC for a round of meetings with US lawmakers. Aziz Haniffa reports
The curative petition and other legal remedies still available to Yakub Memon are part of his rights as a prisoner condemned to death. Does the Maharashtra government want to deprive him of these rights, asks Jyoti Punwani.
'The consolation is that in recent years, the focus at the time of the anniversary has been increasingly shifting from Indira Gandhi's assassination to the plight of the thousands of innocent Sikhs who had been killed in retaliation,' Manoj Mitta, co-author of When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
'I don't think there is a need to order a fresh investigation into the complaint against Modi & Co. As the amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran said in his report to the Supreme Court, the existing material is more than sufficient to prosecute Modi and other high-ups of his regime,' Manoj Mitta, author of the book The Fiction Of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra tells Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.
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