Written by: Express News Service
2 min readFeb 18, 2014 12:50 PM IST
First published on: Nov 12, 2013 at 01:33 PM IST
Former minister in the Narendra Modi government and ex-BJP MLA Maya Kodnani (58) has been granted three months bail on medical grounds by Gujarat High Court on Tuesday.
A division bench of justices K S Jhaveri and K J Thaker,after hearing temporary bail application seeking six months’ relief by Kodnani,granted three-month bail to her.
Kodnani’s advocate Hardik Dave submitted before the court that she was suffering with tuberculosis of intestine besides heart disease and depression.
The advocate sought bail of six months for the treatment of the mentioned health problems and also submitted relevant medical documents to the court.
The Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the riot cases,however,opposed the bail plea,saying that the treatment can be made available to her as per jail manual.
The court,after going through the documents and hearing both the sides,granted three months’ conditional bail to Kodnani.
The court has asked Kodnani to furnish details to the SIT of her travels outside Gujarat for treatment.
Maya Kodnani and 30 others were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court in August 2012 in Naroda Patiya massacre case in which 97 Muslims were killed during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
The Modi government which earlier had given go ahead to file an appeal in higher court to seek death sentence for Maya Kodnani and others,however,in May this year refused permission to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) to file the appeal.
Kodnani,who was an MLA at the time of the riots,was made minister of state for women and child development in 2007 but had to resign after she was arrested in March 2009.
Kodnani,a three-time MLA from Naroda who was considered to be close to Chief Minister Modi,is the first woman to be convicted in a post-Godhra riots case.
(with PTI inputs)
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