The Supreme Court-constituted Special Investigation Team, probing certain Gujarat riot cases afresh, on Friday filed a chargesheet in Naroda Gam case in which Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former state minister Maya Kodnani is one of the prime accused.
The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday issued notice to state minister Maya Kodnani on an application filed by the Supreme Court appointed Special Investigation Team for cancellation of her anticipatory bail in the 2002 Naroda Patia riot case.
Three days after she was declared as an absconder, Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani was on Thursday granted anticipatory bail by a local court in some post-Godhra riot cases of 2002 being probed afresh by a Supreme Court. appointed Special Investigating Team.
Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani wanted in a fresh probe into the gruesome attacks during the 2002 post-Godhra riots, remained elusive and skipped the weekly Cabinet meeting in Ahemdabad on Wednesday, as two police officers were grilled for their role during the communal clashes.
Kodnani is an accused in the Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya case. Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Jaideep Patel, another key accused in the Naroda Gam case behind bars, was also granted bail.
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.
With the Gujarat high court cancelling the anticipatory bail of state minister Maya Kodnani in the 2002 Naroda Patiya riot case, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said it respected the court verdict and the law should take its course in the matter.
Justice A S Dave of Gujarat High Court on Thursday declined to hear the petition of the Special Investigation Team challenging anticipatory bail granted to state minister Maya Kodnani and former Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Jaydeep Patel in the 2002 post Godhra riot cases in Gujarat.
They were BJP corporator Maya Kodnani, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and others, the victim told the Nanavati Commission.
'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.'
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.
The seven others who Kodnani wanted to be summoned as witnesses are former BJP MLA Amrish Patel, Jagdish Patel, Lakhabhai Rathod, Dhaval Shah, Dhiraj Rathod, M D Lakhiya and Kantibhai Solanki.
The three of the total 16 accused were held guilty in an order pronounced on April 20.
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.
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.
She said she has not yet thought about joining active politics, but will continue to remain a Bharatiya Janata Party worker.
He told the court that he had met Kodnani at Sola Civil Hospital that morning.
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.
'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.'
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 high court upheld conviction of 13 people including Bajrangi, and convicted another three for the first time, while acquitting 18 of the 32 people convicted by the trial court in 2012.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.