Kodnani in depression, being given shock therapy

Convicted in the Naroda Patiya riot case for her role in inciting communal violence, former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani is now undergoing treatment for acute depression.

Doctors who are treating Kodnani at a government hospital said she was showing severe suicidal tendencies and had failed to respond to any sort of medicinal treatment, prompting them to give her electric shock therapy.
 “Kodnani is being given electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) under anaesthesia. Her depression failed to improve despite aggressive medicinal treatment, hence it was imperative for the team of doctors treating her at the civil hospital to consider giving her ECT," said a senior doctor.

Doctors said this was the first time Kodnani was given ECT. They said she would be given shock therapy twice a week.

Kodnani was out on three-month bail since November last year on medical grounds. The Gujarat High court had rejected her plea for extending bail by 180 days. But the Supreme Court gave her interim relief in the form of a week's bail. The Naroda Patiya riots case was one of the worst riot cases in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which at least 97 people from the area were killed.