Dr Maya Kodnani was sentenced to 28 years in
prison by a special trial judge for “masterminding” the riots in Naroda Patiya
and Naroda Gam areas in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2002. It is highly likely that Kodnani, and others,
may have been framed for political reasons, while those who were guilty got
away. Here’s why.
On 31 August 2012, Jyotsna
Yagnik, the special trial judge, pronounced a 28-year prison sentence against
Dr Maya Kodnani for “masterminding” one of the bloodiest episodes of communal
violence in Ahmedabad on 28 February 2002. This judgement led to widespread
jubilation in the mainstream media, orchestrated by the “secular brigade”
allied to the Congress and the left parties. Kodnani was serving as a minister
for women and child development in Narendra Modi’s government from 2007. So a
jail term for one of Modi’s ministers gave a big boost to the United
Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, making them believe that this would pave
the way for getting at Modi himself, who was then chief minister of Gujarat.
As in the
case of Lt Col Shrikant Purohit’s incarceration, none in the media examined the
case with care. Purohit was released on bail in the Malegaon blasts case even
though the evidence that he was aiding “saffron terrorism” was thin. The
mainstream media simply reproduced the UPA-orchestrated narrative without
questioning the evidence in Purohit’s case.
However,
after discovering some evidence of
mala fide intent in Purohit’s case, I decided to personally examine
Kodnani’s case as well. The motivation for it came from reading the judgment of
Judge Yagnik, who did not accept large parts of the evidence proffered in
favour of Kodnani. For this purpose, I went and met Kodnani’s family in
Ahmedabad about two years ago, and examined the evidence marshalled against her
as well as the evidence Kodnani had put forward in her defence.
Now that my
2014 exposé regarding Purohit’s case has been vindicated and even parts of the
mainstream media have accepted that the UPA government was less than fair with
him by jailing and torturing a serving army officer, I hope readers will follow
the details of Kodnani’s case with an open mind and judge the case on merit.
Charges against Maya Kodnani
Whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence punishable with death, 2*[imprisonment for life] or rigorous imprisonment for a term of two years or upwards, shall where no express provision is made in this Code for the punishment of such a conspiracy, be punished in the same manner as if he had abetted such offence.
In other words, Kodnani was indicted
for having “masterminded” the killings and mayhem committed on 28 February 2002
in Ahmedabad’s Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam areas following the Godhra train
carnage of 27 February 2002. After two years of incarceration, she managed to
secure bail on 31 July 2014 on grounds of serious illnesses and the severe
depression she developed while in jail.
Subjected to lethal medical treatment
Kodnani’s
husband, Surendra Kodnani, who is himself a doctor, told me that “the treatment
given to her in jail indicates as though the authorities were out to kill her.”
For instance, she was given three Electroconvulsive therapies (ECTs) in prison
without her family's permission. Such therapy involves the outmoded technique
of giving electric shocks to the patient as a treatment for severe depression.
Needless to say, the treatment did her more harm than good. Her husband put his
foot down when he got to know about the plan to subject her to a fourth ECT. He
said, “What if she dies given her fragile health? Who would take responsibility
for her death?”
The most
fundamental principle of criminal jurisprudence followed in India and most
civilised countries is that a person is assumed innocent till proven guilty.
But, in the case of Kodnani, Judge Yagnik appears to have shown no such
consideration in her 1,969-page-long judgment.
Maya Kodnani: A background
Kodnani was
a well-known practicing gynaecologist and used to live in the Naroda Patiya
area of Ahmedabad. She belongs to the Sindhi community. Her family had come as
refugees from the province of Sind in what came to be known as Pakistan after
the partition of 1947. She and her doctor husband, Surendra Kodnani, ran a
private hospital in an area which is inhabited largely by working-class Hindus
and Muslims. In this constituency, Muslims are concentrated in two areas –
Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam.
Kodnani’s
father was a school teacher who retired as a principal in Banaskantha district
of Gujarat. Since her father also happened to be a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
worker, she too was nurtured by Sangh sanskar (values). This made her an easy target
for demonisation by “left secular” non-governmental organisations (NGOs),
particularly the one led by Teesta Setalvad, who played a leading role in
filing Gujarat riot cases on behalf of Muslims.
Kodnani
started her political career in 1995 when she was elected as a municipal
corporator on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket as part of the 33 per cent
quota reserved for women. However, the ticket was given to her as much for
being a popular doctor in the Naroda area, where she had started her medical
practice in 1988. Since she had established a good rapport with the people in
her area, she won her maiden election to become a corporator with a comfortable
margin. In 1998, she won her first election as a member of legislative assembly
(MLA) with a margin of 85,000 votes. It was then one of the biggest assembly
constituencies (later divided and made smaller) with 450,000 voters covering an
area of 23 kilometres.
She won her
second assembly election in 2002 with a still bigger margin of 1.15 lakh votes.
The third assembly election in 2007 saw her win with an even larger margin of
1.81 lakh votes. It was after the 2007 election that she became a minister in
Modi's cabinet. By all accounts, she was a popular leader with a strong mass
base in her constituency, which had a sizeable Muslim population, especially in
the direct vicinity of her private hospital in Naroda Patiya. The Muslims of
that area were not just her voters; they were also a sizeable proportion of the
patients, and she had overseen the birth of numerous Muslim children in the
area. In fact, the Muslim vote had played an important role in each of her
elections since 1995. Thus, the image of a rabid Muslim-hater, propagated assiduously
by “secular” NGOs and magazines like Tehelka,
not to speak of the Congress party, was far from reality.
A medical
doctor who has attended to countless Muslim women and delivered their babies is
not the kind of person who would go around butchering people on the streets.
Another
telltale sign is that Kodnani was made an accused six years after the 2002 riots. If she was a
conspirator, one wonders why her name never came up in the immediate aftermath
of 2002.
There are
several noteworthy aspects to the charges levelled against Kodnani. Her name
was not mentioned in any of the complaints or first information reports (FIRs)
filed in 2002, when a majority of the cases – both genuine and false – were
registered. NGOs like the one run by Setalvad and Javed Anand had played a
leading role in filing cases. As described by Modi himself in my book, Modi, Muslims and Media, the
Gujarat government had been forced to relax all the rules regarding
registration of cases due to the hysteria created by NGOs. The normal procedure
is that complainants have to go personally to a police station to register
complaints or FIRs. But making concessions for the traumatised condition of the
riot victims, the Gujarat government enabled the victims to register their FIRs
in relief camps by posting the concerned police officers in the camps.
To quote
Modi from an interview I conducted in 2013 (translated from
Hindi):
“The law of
the land says that a police FIR should be handwritten (now they can be also be
recorded on computer). But almost all the FIRs filed under the aegis of these
NGOs are xeroxes – which is in itself illegal. These NGOs made a common
template for registering FIRs and got it xeroxed. They then simply filled in
the name and location of the concerned person. Even today, the law doesn’t
allow for a xerox FIR anywhere in the country. But in Gujarat thousands of
cases that were filed were all xeroxes with a set pattern of complaints.
“Certain
NGOs had hired full time staff to get these xeroxed forms filled. (The
complaints were not written by the victims but by the hired staff of NGOs). The
law of the land demands that a complainant has to go personally to the police
station to lodge an FIR. But I allowed FIRs to be registered in relief camps
plus those set up in Circuit House, etc, because I did not want that injustice
should be done to anyone. My job as CM was to control the riot, to help the
affected people and to ensure that those treated unjustly should get justice.”
NGOs working
at the behest of the Congress party and some elements within the Muslim
community took advantage of this situation by xeroxing (making copies) in bulk
a standard form for registering complaints in which victims were asked to fill
any name they chose as the accused. They were even instigated to settle old
personal scores and name not just the real culprits but all and sundry among
the BJP cadre.
Even so, in
2002, none had mentioned Kodnani's name as an accused or accomplice in the
riots, leave alone implicate her as a “mastermind”. Therefore, not a single FIR
was filed with Kodnani’s name as an accused. Her name suddenly cropped up when
the Congress party came to power a second time, and the Supreme Court admitted
a public interest litigation filed by Setalvad and Zakia Jafri, wife of Ehsan
Jafri, to appoint a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the role of
Modi along with all senior bureaucrats and cabinet ministers in allegedly
instigating the 2002 riots. It is at this time that witnesses were mobilised by
Setalvad to name Kodnani as a prime accused in the 2002 riots, because by then
Kodnani was a minister in Modi’s cabinet. It is unprecedented in the history of
criminal jurisprudence anywhere in the world that six years after an alleged
crime, the judiciary orders the police to file an FIR against an individual who
had never been accused of any wrongdoing previously; nor was there any mention
of hers before the Inquiry Commission headed by Justice G T Nanavati.
All of a
sudden, 11 witnesses accused her of “masterminding” the riot. Rais Khan, the
right-hand man of Setalvad for collecting evidence from riot victims, told me
in a recorded video interview that Setalvad made innumerable Muslims file false
affidavits. In many cases, the complainants did not even know what was written
on their behalf. Most of these false witnesses could not hold on to their
claims during cross-examination. The testimonies of 11 residents of Naroda Patiya,
who testified against Kodnani, may well have collapsed but for the willingness
of Judge Yagnik to humour their evidence. Khan also alleged that Setalvad paid
a monthly allowance as well as lump sum amounts to most of the witnesses. The
role played by Setalvad in influencing the political narrative of the 2002
riots is worth hearing in the words of Khan. (Watch
video interview here and here.)
Why Kodnani appears to be falsely implicated
If we
examine the schedule of Kodnani on the fateful day and compare it to the
charges on which she has been booked, it seems likely that some of the
testimonies of witnesses can be doubted.
On 28
February 2002, the day the riots broke out in Ahmedabad and several other
places in Gujarat, Kodnani’s movements are easy to track for the crucial part
of the day because there is audio-visual evidence of her presence at key
places; on the other hand, there is flimsy and mutually contradictory evidence
by way of statements of witnesses vouching for her presence in places where she
allegedly instigated riotous mobs.
Kodnani’s
presence in the state assembly is recorded in the video footage of the day’s proceedings.
She left home at around 7.45am to attend the special session of the assembly
called to pay tribute to those karsevaks who were burnt alive the previous day
at Godhra. The footage shows that the session started at 8.30am and concluded
at 8.40am. The time is established by the fact that the camera pans to the wall
clock in the assembly just as the shraddhanjali meeting ends. The clock shows the time
to be 8.40am. In that very shot, Kodnani is visible as one of the participants
of that meeting. (Here is
the video.)
This meeting
took place in the hall on the second floor of the secretariat. Thereafter,
Kodnani came down with MLA Amrish Patel of Asarwa. The SIT accepted Patel’s
statement about having walked down with Kodnani after the 8.40am meeting, but
Judge Yagnik did not call him to court to testify even though he was
chargesheeted as a witness. Yagnik declined to summon Patel, saying it is the
right of the prosecution to call who they want as a witness. While it is indeed
the prosecution’s privilege to summon whoever they think to be essential to
prove their case, the accused also has the right to include a witness who
endorses her version to prove the version of the prosecution to be malafide.
Kodnani insisted on Patel’s testimony and asked that he be brought in as a
court witness. But the judge overruled her plea.
Back to that
morning, Kodnani came down in an elevator and walked down all the way to a
distant car park to drive her private car – a Maruti Esteem. As an MLA in 2002,
(she was not a minister at that time) she was not entitled to a
chauffeur-driven car. But Judge Yagnik had this to say in her judgment: “She,
being minister, she must have been escorted; the area must have been cleared
for her”. But the fact is, Kodnani become a minister only in 2007. In 2002, she
was just an MLA and, therefore, not entitled to police escort.
Kodnani
probably left the Vidhan Sabha premises around 9.15am because it took her that
much of time to go down the assembly building and walk through the car park to
reach her vehicle. From there, she went to Sola hospital in Sarkhej area, which
is situated on the Gandhinagar highway. This is the hospital where all the dead
bodies of the Godhra-Sabarmati Express carnage had been brought. The special
reason for her visit to Sola hospital was that three persons of her
neighbourhood had been burnt alive in the train fire. One of them was the
father of a nurse employed in her hospital. She wanted to help nurse Lata and
others of her neighbourhood to get the bodies released from the hospital
expeditiously.
CCTV and media recordings at Sola hospital
Kodnani
reached Sola hospital around 10am covering a distance of about 22km from
Gandhinagar Vidhan Sabha – almost at the same time as Amit Shah arrived there
separately. They were confronted with a mob of angry Hindus outraged at the
brutal way in which a Muslim mob had stoned and allegedly set fire to a bogie
full of karsevaks. The Hindu mob at the
hospital surrounded her and Shah – both of whom were pushed around and abused.
But they managed to enter and get the doctors to expedite the release of dead
bodies to the relatives.
As they came
out of the hospital escorted by a police inspector, the crowd was still
agitated and unruly. This is also recorded in the video footage of various
media persons who were covering that morning’s happenings at the hospital. (See
video here.)
Given the
mood of the mob and realising that it was not safe for her to travel alone in
her car, both Shah and Kodnani left their respective vehicles behind. Instead,
they travelled together in a police jeep. Some party workers followed the jeep
in Kodnani’s car. Inspector Lathia, who was on duty at Sola hospital, gave
instructions to his driver, Kantibhai Solanki, to drop Kodnani and Shah at a
safe place. She was dropped at RTO circle, Shahibagh, while Shah got off
earlier at Gotha Chowkadi.
Judge Yagnik
did not call either Shah or Solanki as witnesses. It is only recently, after
her appeal, that Kodnani was allowed to call witnesses who have the evidence to
corroborate her innocence. These witnesses might well have contradicted the
charge that from 8.30am to 10.30am, Kodnani was instigating mobs at Naroda
Patiya.
The news of
Kodnani’s visit to Sola Hospital and the hostile response she received there
was carried all day by Sandesh TV channel on 1 March 2002. This evidence
was put before the court, but Judge Yagnik did not take it into consideration.
Even the 7pm Doordarshan news bulletin had given coverage to
the Sola incident. In this video recording, Kodnani is shown going in at about
10am and coming out of the hospital with a policeman. But none of this
impressed Judge Yagnik.
Simple logistics go against the logic of the judgment
It is
noteworthy that the Gujarat Vidhan Sabha and Sola Hospital are 22km apart. And
from Sola to Naroda Patiya through the crowded city, the distance is another
23km. In 2002, there was no express highway between Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar.
Therefore, vehicular movement between the two cities on the old two-lane road
was much slower. Even city roads were not as good as they became later. If the
court tried to reconstruct the events of the day, it could well have developed
doubts about whether Kodnani could have been sighted at Naroda Patiya at
8.30am, or even 9.30am or 10.30am, as claimed by all the 11 witnesses. Since
there is video evidence that till 8.40am she was in the assembly hall, there is
no way she could have gone to Sola, spent some time there and yet be present in
Naroda Patiya between 8.30am and 10.30am.
Mobile phone records also ignored
Similarly,
mobile phone records placed before the court by the prosecution show her
location at Sola Hospital from 10am onwards. Likewise, the phone records
prepared by the police officer J S Gedam, who was deputed to the SIT, showed
that Kodnani’s mobile number was nowhere close to Naroda Patiya till 12.37pm.
These were placed before the court, but Judge Yagnik discounted the validity of
that piece of evidence by saying that since the bill of that mobile phone was
being paid by the BJP office, “we can’t be sure if Mayaben was personally using
that phone”. The analysis of phone call details from 27 February to 4 March was
available, but the court did not check if Kodnani was using that phone or not.
Kingpin of conspiracy but not part of “unlawful assembly”
On that
particular day, large parts of Gujarat were burning. Most others accused of
involvement in the riots have been punished under section 149B (being part of
unlawful assembly). Even though Judge Yagnik gave Kodnani the benefit of doubt
under the charge of ‘unlawful assembly’ because her presence could not be
established beyond reasonable doubt, yet she called her the “kingpin of the
conspiracy”. One wonders how Kodnani could instigate a murderous mob if her
very presence as part of that unlawful assembly could not be established.
NGO-propped witnesses
Now let us
look at the evidence brought forth by Setalvad through 11 witnesses.
1) Amina Abbas: While Abbas was an inmate in the Shah Alam
camp, she was interviewed by Setalvad for a special issue of Communalism Combat (CC), of which
Setalvad is the owner-editor. The issue was titled ‘Genocide’. This bizarre
exaggeration and overstatement itself shows the provocative slant of the CC team. The killing of 863 Muslims and
262 Hindus in the week-long riots of 2002 can be termed a “genocide” of Muslims
only by someone keen on promoting a persecution complex among an already
volatile minority. (The death tally has been vetted by the Supreme
Court-monitored SIT.)
Coming back
to Abbas’s story, in the entire interview, she doesn’t once name Kodnani as the
one responsible for or as an instigator of riots in Naroda Patiya. And yet in
2008, for the first time, she alleges that at 8.30am, Kodnani came with her
personal assistant to Naroda Patiya and got off from her car in front of
Noorani Masjid to instigate the mob to riot. Abbas goes on to say that because
she was wearing her work uniform – that of a security guard – the mob took her
to be a policewoman. She claimed to have heard Kodnani say, “Maro, kato (kill them, cut them up).” Thereafter,
Kodnani allegedly fired a pistol shot and left.
Abbas’s
testimony appears questionable for these reasons:
As mentioned
earlier, till at least 8.40am, Kodnani was in the assembly and took at least 20
minutes to reach her car and drive out. Naroda Patiya is at least 45km from the
assembly. There is no way Kodnani could have been in two places at the same
time unless someone saw her clone.
Abbas’s
normal “service hours” used to be from 3pm to 10pm. On 27 February, seeing the
disturbed atmosphere following the Godhra train massacre and thebandh call given by the Vishva Hindu
Parishad (VHP) and the BJP, the owner of the establishment where Abbas worked
had declared the establishment closed on 28 February. So what was Abbas doing
in her service uniform that early morning, much before her duty hours? The
response of ordinary citizens who do not wish to be part of mob violence is to
stay away and not go snooping to hear who said what to whom.
Kodnani has
never had any weapons licence and, as an MLA, she was not likely to have
carried an unlicensed weapon. All through the trial, no attempt was made to
recover the revolver allegedly used by Kodnani.
On that
morning, the police did not escort Kodnani, as deposed by Abbas. As an MLA, she
was not entitled to police escort.
In her
deposition, Abbas doesn’t explain how she came to be included as a witness in
this case. In fact, the answer she gave is in itself suspicious: “I don’t
remember who called me, or who took me to Gandhi Nagar. All I remember is that
I sent an application to SIT saying, ‘I have some important information to give
regarding Naroda Patiya’.” That is why the SIT just recorded her statement, but
it did not subject it to scrutiny or verification. In her cross-examination, it
became apparent that after Abbas appeared against Kodnani, she accompanied
Setalvad on several foreign trips. She used to be a small-scale money-lender in
the area before the 2002 riots. But ever since she made common cause with
Setalvad, she has become a jet-setter.
One-line
testimonies of this kind have been taken at face value and used to send Kodnani
to 28 years in jail even when she has strong evidence to support her
non-involvement.
2) Dildaar Umrao: The second main witness in the case said,
“Madam came around 11.45 am, stopped her car near Panchwati Estate. From there
she signalled her workers to come near her. Thereafter she opened her car
dickey and took out swords and other weapons which she distributed among her
party workers.” However, between 2002 and 2008, Umrao had given testimonies to
four or five other agencies before giving this statement to SIT. In none of the
earlier statements did he implicate Kodnani. Like the others, he too mentions
her name for the first time in 2008.
Umrao is
also a close associate of Setalvad, and has accompanied her for several
meetings in Delhi and elsewhere. He used to work as a kabaadi (buyer and seller of junk and waste
products). But after meeting with Setalvad, he stopped that work.
3) Abdul Majeed: Majeed was the third important witness. He
had lost five members of his family in the riots. He too gave statements to the
police and to the Crime Branch, etc, soon after the riots in 2002. But he too
had never named Kodnani in any of his earlier statements to different agencies.
The rest of
the eight witnesses merely described her presence in different locations. They
echo what Abbas said about Kodnani having called her party workers and told
them to go on a killing spree. They all claim that they saw her addressing a
mob of 15,000 to 17,000 persons. Two of the witnesses had said that she stopped
near the gate of the ST workshop at Naroda Patiya, spoke with the police
Inspector, K K Mysorewala, gave him some instructions and drove away.
In all, 200
Muslim witnesses were examined in this case. Out of 200, only 11 spoke of
Kodnani’s presence. (And none of these 11 even mentioned her name prior to
2008. It took them a good six-and-a-half years after the actual events to
implicate Kodnani.) None of the other 200 witnesses mentions anything about
Kodnani, leave alone she distributing weapons to the mob. If she had indeed
publicly distributed weapons and fired gunshots, surely this merited more
witnesses.
Contradictions in witness accounts
Many of the
witnesses contradict each other about the time and place at which they spotted
her. They also give contrary descriptions of whether the person accompanying
her was her personal assistant or her driver. If they had actually spotted
Kodnani, the description of the person who allegedly accompanied her should
have been similar, if not identical. The court of Yagnik did not cross-question
these witnesses for giving contradictory statements about the person allegedly
accompanying Kodnani.
The first
FIRs had mentioned five accused by name and described a mob of 15,000-17,000
that went on a rampage. Out of the five accused that were named from day one,
three have been acquitted even though the police as well as the Crime Branch
said in their depositions before the court that there were five main
instigators of violence against whom several Muslim witnesses had testified.
It is
noteworthy that none of the journalists covering the Naroda Patiya massacre
ever named Kodnani when their reports were published during the riots or even weeks
or months after the killings. As said earlier, even Setalvad’s Communalism Combat did not name her in its special issue
of March 2002. And yet she was treated as a “kingpin” of the riots by Judge
Yagnik.
Police
inspector Mysorewala, who had accompanied her on 28 February 2002, did come and
testify before the court that Kodnani did not come anywhere near the murderous
mob on that fateful day.
Her phone
location, as per mobile tower records, shows that she came to Naroda Patiya at
around 12.37pm. That is the time she came to her hospital building, where her
MLA’s office was also located. Her office is barely 500 metres from the site
where the murders took place. But not a single witness claimed to have seen her
at 12.37pm.
Contradictions in the Naroda Patiya case
Judge Yagnik
was also given charge of the Naroda Gam killings. This village is about 2.5km
from Naroda Patiya. In the Naroda Gam case, the same five witnesses who
testified about her presence in Naroda Patiya said that Kodnani was in Naroda
Gam from 10am to 10.30am – the very time she was at Sola hospital. Judge Yagnik
could have checked whether the same five people could have witnessed Kodnani’s
presence in two places 2.5km apart. The normal response of members of a
community under attack is to run for shelter and not to shadow the alleged
leader of a murderous mob.
Four
witnesses allege that she came and communicated through certain signs to the
8,000-10,000-strong mob and then gave a fiery speech and left. One witness went
on to say that she took out a volatile liquid from her car dickey and gave it
to the mob. The Naroda Gam case was handed over to Judge K K Bhatt after Yagnik
retired.
Senior officials’ testimonies ignored
The first
defence witness from Kodnani’s side was executive magistrate Dheeraj Lakhabhai
Rathode. However, because he had deposed in favour of Kodnani’s version in the
Naroda Gam case, Judge Yagnik dropped him from the Naroda Patiya case and
discounted his testimony. This, despite the fact that he was on duty at Sola
hospital on 28 February morning and confirmed Kodnani’s presence at the
hospital from about 10am onwards. Given that magistrate Rathode’s testimony is
backed by video-recorded evidence, Yagnik’s decision to not include his
testimony seems questionable.
The second
witness in favour of Kodnani was yet another executive magistrate, Kantibhai
Bhikhabhai Soni. Since he too confirmed Kodnani’s presence at Sola (as recorded
on video) in the Naroda Gam case, he too was dropped in the Naroda Patiya case,
even though he was a prosecution witness.
The third
witness, police inspector Mansukh Lathia, gave his statement before the SIT for
both the Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam cases. But he could not depose in court
because by the time Yagnik was handed charge of the case in 2008, he had
migrated to and settled down in the United States. He could have easily been
summoned or cross-examined through video conference, but this was not done. He
was the one who sent his driver Kantibhai Solanki to drop Kodnani at a safe
place.
It is noteworthy
that the driver Solanki deposed in the Naroda Gam case but he too was not
called for the Naroda Patiya case. He was the one who had dropped Kodnani at
RTO circle, where she got her car that had followed the police jeep. From there
she had gone to the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, where some of the injured persons
in the Godhra train as well as those injured during the riots of 28 February
morning were being brought in. There she met the MLA of the area, Amrish Patel.
Thereafter,
she drove to her own hospital to attend to an emergency delivery, which is also
part of the hospital record. Between 3.30pm and 3.45pm, Kodnani left her
hospital and went back to Civil Hospital. The Superintendent of this hospital,
Dr Anil Chaddha, is a witness and issued a statement before the SIT that
Kodnani had come and met him to enquire about the patients. This person too was
dropped from the Naroda Patiya case even though he was a chargesheeted witness.
From Civil
Hospital, Kodnani came back home and stayed there till the next morning. Her
mobile phone records confirm all of these locations.
On the other
hand, not a single video or audio recording has been produced to authenticate
Kodnani’s participation in the killings. Her presence at Naroda Patiya would
mean that she traversed the long distance from the Vidhan Sabha, which she left
at about 9am for Sola hospital, and then came to Naroda Patiya, travelling a
distance of about 45km in a self-driven car, distributing weapons, delivering
speeches at three places, including Sola, all in a matter of an hour, that too
at a time when Ahmedabad roads were poor and there were two railway crossings
en route.
Kodnani’s
video-recorded behaviour and body language are revealing. The facts point to a
totally different persona. Though Kodnani is shown on video being jostled
around and yelled at by angry relatives and others who had gathered at Sola
hospital, she doesn’t speak a word, leave alone instigate the angry relatives.
Instead, she quietly slips out. If she was in a mood to provoke the already
agitated crowds, Sola was a good place to do so. But she maintains her calm.
Why then would she go and provoke violence in an area which is populated by her
neighbours, many of whom were also her patients and whose children she had
delivered over the years? A person who has been a life-giver is not suddenly
likely to turn into a mass murderer, especially since Kodnani did not have any
such history before that fateful date.
The “sting” by Tehelka
Another bit
of corroborative “evidence” used by the court against Kodnani is the so-called
sting operation by Ashish Khetan, then with Tehelka.
Firstly, there is no sting operation on Kodnani. Instead, two of the accused –
Prakash Chhara and Suresh Langda – are shown talking to each other in an
inebriated state. Khetan asks one of them: “On that day (28th February 2002),
which all politicians came? Did Mayaben come?” At this Chhara asks Langda, “Did
Maya Kodnani come?” Langda says: “Yes, she came for a little time.” Chhara then
asks: “Didn’t she go around in an open jeep? Did not Narendra bhai also come on
that day?”
At this
Khetan asks with mock surprise: “Narendra bhai?” Langda says: “Yes, he came in
front of our house, patted us on the back and said, you are doing good work
[meaning setting people’s homes on fire and killing them brutally].” It is
noteworthy that the Supreme Court-appointed SIT did not find any evidence of
Modi having gone around the city encouraging mob violence, as alleged by these
two. But Yagnik takes them seriously even though both contradict each other.
Chhara’s
statement does not state any time and instead makes a vague assertion that “she
used to go around all day in an open jeep”. And yet, this has been treated as
definitive evidence to prove that Kodnani was a co-conspirator in the riots.
What’s more,
the sting operation was of 90 hours’ duration over several visits. Khetan
edited and cut it into a one-hour video which was provided to Aaj Tak for telecast. This was relayed by the
channel just before the
appointment of the SIT by the Supreme Court.
Normally,
courts do not accept edited recordings as definitive evidence because the
likelihood of tampering and distortion is very high. But in this case, one
stray sentence without any substantiation was used by Judge Yagnik to condemn
Kodnani to 28 years of imprisonment.
It is
interesting to note that Chharu and Langda blurted a lot more during that
drunken conversation with Khetan. They named a lot more people. But the court
did not haul up any of the rest. Judge Yagnik’s focus was on the part that
indicted Kodnani.
As long as
the UPA government was in power, Kodnani was not even allowed bail even though
her health deteriorated dramatically while in jail. According to her doctor,
unable to take the shock of her conviction, she sank into deep depression that
was made worse by the kind of medical treatment she was subjected to while in
jail. Her husband had to intervene firmly as they were about to give her the
fourth ECT.
Overconfidence also did her in
Knowledgeable
people say Kodnani suffered this fate because she was so confident of the video
evidence and testimonies of credible witnesses that she did not even bother to
hire a personal lawyer. In all, there were 62 accused in this case and all of
them had a common lawyer appointed by the Government of Gujarat, which had also
been put in the dock for orchestrating the killings. Kodnani was part of the 62
accused that the government-hired lawyer defended en bloc. Of the 62, 31 were
acquitted and 31 convicted.
It is
unlikely that she got the best defence possible.
It is highly
likely that, like Kodnani, many innocents may have been framed for political
reasons, while those who were really guilty got away with murder.
Kodnani has
appealed against this order in the High Court, pleading that she has been
falsely implicated. One hopes she can get justice.
To be continued....
First posted on September 4, 2017 at,
https://swarajyamag.com/politics/case-against-maya-kodnani-convicted-in-2002-riots-seems-pretty-thin
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