Former Gujarat minister, Maya Kodnani, in a police vehicle, arrives at a special court in Ahmedabad, Friday. — APAHMEDEBAD — A former Indian state minister was Friday sentenced to 28 years in jail for murder and conspiracy during one of the country's worst religious riots, when up to 2,500 people, most of them Muslim, were hunted down and hacked, beaten or burnt to death in 2002. Hundreds of friends and relatives of the 32 people found guilty gathered outside a court in the western city of Ahmedebad to hear the sentences, the final step in a years-long case that cast a spotlight on still simmering communal tension in the world's biggest democracy. Most relatives of the victims of the riots in Gujarat state stayed away from the court, a sign that 10 years on, memories of the bloodletting by Hindu mobs still cast a pall of fear over the state's Muslim community. There were unconfirmed reports that some Muslim shopkeepers had shut their establishments and families had fled the city, fearing retaliatory attacks over the sentences. Maya Kodnani, a sitting lawmaker from the state's ruling Hindu militant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Gujarat minister for women and child development between 2007-09, was the highest-profile conviction to date in connection with the riots. She was sentenced to “enhanced life imprisonment" over the killing of 97 Muslims in the Naroda Patiya suburb of the city of Ahmedabad. Principal judge Jyotsna Yagnik called the former minister “the kingpin of the religious riots" and awarded her a 10-year and 18-year sentence for murder and other charges including inciting religious hatred. Yagnik said 57-year-old Kodnani was guilty of “instigating mobs and provoking unlawful assembly. “In a way she has helped the entire crime," she said. The state prosecutor had called for all 32 convicted to face the death penalty, even though India rarely carries out the sentence. All 32 were sentenced to jail, for terms ranging from 14 years to life. A leader of a local extremist Hindu group, Babu Bajrangi, who was filmed by an Indian news magazine in 2007 describing setting families on fire, was also awarded an enhanced life sentence until death. One convict has absconded and will be sentenced once caught, defense and prosecution lawyers said. Bajrangi, in a taped interview, confessed to helping orchestrate the killing in Naroda Patiya where homes were set on fire and some Muslims were set ablaze while hiding in a pit. “In Naroda and Naroda Patiya, we didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire, we set them on fire and killed them," he said, according to a transcript available online. Kodnani's conviction is an embarrassment for both the BJP and Gujarat's high-flying Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, who is lauded by foreign companies for his business-friendly polices and is often touted as the country's next prime minister. Modi, the 61-year-old BJP leader, who is unable to gain a visa to the United States because of the riots, has been widely criticized for failing to stop them, but has consistently denied charges of wrong-doing. More than 100 others have been convicted for killing Muslims during the riots. In 2008, the Supreme Court ordered the re-investigation of nine of the most sensitive incidents during the riots, including the initial train fire and the violence in Naroda Patiya. — Agencies
