Ahmedabad: Gujarat High Court on Tuesday granted three-month temporary bail to Maya Kodnani, a convict in the 2002 Naroda Patiya riots case, on medical grounds.
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 wuth 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.
A Special SIT court had in August 2012 awarded life imprisonment to BJP MLA Maya Kodnani, Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and 29 other convicts for the 2002 riots here at Naroda Patiya, where 97 people were brutally killed.
The court had named Kodnani, a sitting MLA and former Gujarat Minister, as "a kingpin of riots" in Naroda area and sentenced her to 26-year life imprisonment.
Kodnani, who was MLA from Naroda at the time of riots, was made Minister of State for Women and Child Development in 2007 in the Narendra Modi government. She had to resign after she was arrested in the case in March 2009.
The three-time legislator is the first woman to be convicted in a post-Godhra riots case. The massacre had taken place a day after the Godhra train burning incident of February 27, 2002.
