BJP ex-minister guilty of murder in Gujarat riots

AHMEDABAD: An Indian court on Wednesday convicted a former state minister and 31 others of murder during one of the worst massacres in religious riots in Gujarat in 2002.

Maya Kodnani, who served as a minister in Gujarat's Hindu nationalist state government from 2007-2009, was found guilty over the killing of 97 Muslims in the Naroda Patiya suburb of the city of Ahmedabad.

Out of 61 people facing charges, 32 were found guilty of murder and 29 were acquitted, prosecution lawyer Shamshad Pathan said.

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 among the convicted.

"More than 90 people lost their lives, mostly children and ladies, all of them were defenceless," public prosecutor Akhil Desai said, adding that he would push for the death penalty when sentences are handed down on Friday.

"If some of the accused are lucky enough to escape the death penalty, I will ask for life imprisonment, not for 14 years but for the rest of their lives," he told reporters.

Kodnani, who served as child and human development minister under Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi until her arrest in 2009, broke down in tears as the guilty verdict was pronounced, as did relatives waiting outside the court.

Modi's proximity to Kodnani is likely to be an embarrassment for a politician widely thought to have prime ministerial ambitions but whose reputation was tarnished by the blood-letting only a few months after he was elected.

The 61-year-old from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who is unable to gain a visa to the United States because of the riots, has been widely criticised for failing to stop them, but has consistently denied charges of wrong-doing.