The Hindu : NHRC team to study court records in Best Bakery case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 08, 2003

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National

NHRC team to study court records in Best Bakery case

By Manas Dasgupta

AHMEDABAD July 7. A three-member team of the National Human Rights Commission arrived here today to study the records before the fast track court of Vadodara in the controversial Best Bakery case in which all the 21 accused were acquitted by the additional sessions judge.

The two-month long trial and the subsequent judgment in the Best Bakery case on June 27, the first in any of the post-Godhra communal riot-related cases in Gujarat, virtually set the tone for all such cases where the members of the minority community were burnt alive during last year's communal riots.

The NHRC had taken a strong exception to the acquittal of all the accused in the absence of any evidence and witnesses to testify the criminal acts during the riots.

The NHRC team comprising its registrar, Ajit Bharihoke, the DIG (investigation), Sudhir Chaudhary, and its Ahmedabad-based special rapporteur, P.G.J. Nampoothri, called on the Acting Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, Justice J. N. Bhatt, to discuss the case.

Despite repeated efforts by the media, the team refused to disclose the content of its discussions with Justice Bhatt or about any other details of its activities.

The team would leave for Vadodara tomorrow where it would study "all the documents pertaining to the case including the judgement passed by the fast track court", Mr. Nampoothri said.

The additional sessions judge of the fast track court, H. U. Mahida, while acquitting the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case in which 12 persons were burnt alive and two others were reported to be missing, had passed strictures against the police investigation into the case and the alleged lack of police protection to the witnesses that led to almost all the 70 or so witnesses turning hostile.

The fate of the case was almost sealed when the main complainant in the incident, Zahira Sheikh, turned hostile and either refused to recognise the accused or actually described them as "saviours" of other trapped Muslims.

While the State Government is yet to decide on appealing against the fast track court's judgment, the case received a new twist with Ms. Zahira's statement in Mumbai and her mother, Seherunnisa, in Vadodara today that they were "pressured" to give false statements before the fast track court in favour of the accused.

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