Riot victim challenges order allowing Kodnani to examine Shah

A victim and witness of 2002 Naroda Gam riot case today filed an additional application in the high court here against the trial court's order allowing Gujarat's former minister Maya Kodnani to examine BJP president Amit Shah.
Sharif Malek, the applicant, also sought a stay to the trial.
"Pending order on my application dated April 18, 2017 in which I have sought replacing special judge P B Desai (of trial court), the hearing on Naroda Gam case should be stayed," Malek's additional application before the HC said.
Malek, who in his April 18 application, had told the HC that the order to allow Kodnani's plea was a ploy to delay the trial, today said the former minister was convicted in Naroda Patiya riots case in 2012, but she never sought to summon Amit Shah as a witness then.

"Kodnani seeks to summon Shah five years after she was given 28 years' life imprisonment in Naroda Patiya case....I believe that to defend herself, she is trying to take recourse to all kinds of political and other means," he alleged.
Kodnani has said she wanted to summon Shah and some others as her witnesses in the present case to prove that she was not at the crime spot when the riots took place.

Malek said judge Desai is a relative of advocate H M Dhruv, who was Kodnani's lawyer in Naroda Patiya case (Dhruv is Desai's uncle). Dhruv's junior Amit Patel is now Kodnani's lawyer in Naroda Gam case.

Naroda Gam massacre is one of the nine major cases of Gujarat riots which were investigated by Supreme Court- appointed Special Investigation Team.
Eleven persons belonging to the minority community were killed in Naroda Gam during the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
Kodnani later became a minister of state in the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat.