Ex-minister found guilty of murder in 2002 riot

A FORMER state minister has been found guilty of murder in one of India’s worst religious riots.

Human rights groups claim about 2,500 people, mostly Muslims, were hacked, beaten or burned to death in Gujarat state after a suspected Muslim mob burned alive 59 Hindu activists and pilgrims inside a train in February 2002.

Prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for MP Maya Kodnani, who was among a group charged with “beating, cutting down, burning alive and causing the deaths of women, men and children”, according to the charge sheet, in an episode of the Gujarat bloodletting known as the Naroda Patiya massacre.

Kodnani’s conviction yesterday came as her Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prepared for elections in the western state of Gujarat.

One witness alleged Kodnani, who became a minister in the state government five years after the riots, identified Muslim targets to be attacked and at one point fired a pistol.

The Congress party, in power nationally, signalled the case would probably feature in its Gujarat election campaign, saying Kodnani’s conviction was proof of the BJP’s involvement in the riots.

The BJP insisted that the court ruling was proof that the state’s criminal justice system was free from bias.

The savagery of the killings still haunts India, which has witnessed many bouts of religious and ethnic violence since independence from Britain in 1947.

Kodnani and 31 others were convicted by the court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s main city, for their role in the massacre in which 97 people were killed.

“For all the 32 accused, I have argued for death penalty,” prosecutor Akhil Desai told a news conference in Ahmedabad.

Kodnani is expected to be sentenced tomorrow.