Last week, the court summoned Shah as a witness following a request by Kodnani, who was the state women and child welfare minister in the then Narendra Modi government in Gujarat.

Kodnani had first requested the court to summon Shah and 13 others in her defence in April this year to prove she was not present at Naroda Gam on February 28 when riots broke out there.

Earlier Riots broke out across Gujarat after a bogie of the Sabarmati Express was set on fire by a suspected Muslim mob at Godhra in February, 2002. The blaze killed 59 Hindus, mostly Karsevaks or volunteers returning from Ayodhya, where rival Hindu and Muslim groups are locked in a decades-old dispute over a religious site. The train fire sparked three days of reprisal attacks across the state that left about 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.

According to her application, by summoning Shah she wanted to prove that she first met the then Sarkhej MLA in the assembly and then again at Sola Civil Hospital when the riots broke out. Kodnani has been on bail on health grounds since 2014.

In 2009, the Supreme Court set up six special courts to speed up trials in cases related to one of the country’s worst religious riots.

Shah told the court that on February 28 he left the assembly building in Gandhinagar for Sola Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, where the bodies of the victims of the train fire had been brought. He said Kodnani was also present there.

“Mayaben Kodnani was not at Naroda Gam but at the State Assembly at 8.30 am. From 9.30 am to 9.45 am, I was at the Civil Hospital and I met Maya Kodnani there,” Shah was quoted as saying by news agency IANS.

The BJP president said police escorted him and Kodnani to a safe place after agitated crowds surrounded them at the hospital. He then said he didn’t know where Kodnani went from there, news agency PTI reported.

Shah, however, said he did not know if a signature on an attendance register Kodnani had produced as evidence in her support was hers, defence and prosecution lawyers said.

“Amit Shah has testified in favour of Kodnani,” said defence counsel Chetan Shah. But prosecution lawyer Samshad Pathan contested that Kodnani’s presence at the assembly and later at the hospital didn’t necessarily absolve her.

“Ami Shah told the court Maya Kodnani was in the assembly in the morning and then was seen leaving the hospital around 11.30am. This does prove she was present at Naroda Gam when the violence happened,” said Pathan.