AHMEDABAD: Former minister Maya Kodnani , who was dubbed the “kingpin” of the Naroda Patia massacre by the special SIT court which convicted her to 28-year imprisonment, got “the benefit of doubt” on Friday by the Gujarat high court from the biggest case relating to communal violence in 2002, where 97 people were killed.Kodnani was first implicated in 2008, by complaints from witnesses that her name was never recorded by police since 2002. The SC-appointed SIT arrested her in 2009 and charged her with conspiracy and incitement. Her bail plea was not opposed by the SIT then.Kodnani continued to claim an alibi in the case, but the SIT court didn’t believe her and recorded her conviction on the basis of the testimonies of 11 witnesses.The HC refused to believe these 11 witnesses on the ground that they revealed details about Kodnani for the first time in 2008 and never told police that they had seen Kodnani on the road (outside Naroda Patia) on the morning of the massacre on February 28, 2002. The HC also said that theirs were contradictory versions. The witnesses said Kodnani alighted from a vehicle, but none of the policemen, who deposed as witnesses before the trial court, mentioned her presence. This led the HC to grant Kodnani the benefit of doubt.After she was lodged at Sabarmati jail in 2012, Kodnani claimed that she had taken severely ill and was reported to be diagnosed with tuberculosis and severe depression.She underwent a long spell of treatment at Civil Hospital , including electroshock therapy, until the HC granted her bail in July 2014, with the observation that prima facie there were contradictions in the evidence against her.The trouble for Kodnani is not over with her acquittal in the HC. She still faces the same charges in another case of violence, the Naroda Gam massacre case, in which at her insistence, BJP national chief Amit Shah was brought in the witness box to establish her claims of having an alibi.

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