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Payal Kukrani, daughter of Manoj Kukrani who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the Naroda Patiya massacre case of the 2002 Gujarat riots and later granted bail on health grounds, has been fielded by the BJP from the Naroda constituency for the Assembly elections next month.
The Naroda Patiya neighbourhood, where 97 people were killed by a rioting mob on February 28, 2002, and adjoining Naroda Gam, form the Assembly constituency.
The incident was later described as “the largest single case of mass murder” during the riots that followed the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra a day earlier, killing 59 people, mostly kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya.
Manoj Kukrani was one of 32 people convicted in the Naroda Patiya case by a special court in Ahmedabad in 2012.
Then BJP MLA Maya Kodnani, among those convicted, was acquitted along with 13 others by the Gujarat High Court in 2018 – the conviction of 16 was upheld, while two had died in jail.
Kukrani’s daughter Payal, a 30-year-old who works as an anaesthetist at a hospital in the Gurukul area of western Ahmedabad, figures in the BJP’s first list of 160 candidates.
Ever since the announcement of Payal’s candidature, their house in Naroda has been receiving visitors and Kukrani and his wife Reshma, a BJP corporator from Ahmedabad’s Saijpur Bogha ward, have been attending to them.
Incidentally, Payal will contest from a constituency that was once represented by Kodnani. In 2017, the seat was won by Balram Thawani, a former corporator, who was dropped this time.
The AAP has nominated Omprakash Tiwari, a local resident, as its candidate.
On her candidature, and whether her predecessors will join her campaign, Payal said, “I think all of them are going to help me with their experience. Yesterday, after the ticket was announced, I met all of them and they were genuinely giving me guidance on how we have to proceed.”
On the case against her father and his conviction, she said, “Obviously it was tough on me and my family, but we got through it. The case was there in the High Court, then we went to the Supreme Court… He is out on bail right now.”
In September 2016, the Gujarat High Court had granted regular bail to Kukrani after his lawyers submitted that he was “totally bedridden and not in a position to carry out his day-to-day activities, and that his condition was deteriorating day by day and that lastly, he was suspected to be suffering from brain cancer”.
Kukrani’s appeal against his conviction remains pending before the Supreme Court.
Payal said she has been associated with the BJP for the last 5-6 years and had campaigned for Thawani in 2017.
