Re-trial or Mis-trial?

A few months back, the Best Bakery case was opened for re-trial outside Gujarat. This happened after prime-witness Zaheera Shaikh, prodded by pinko, Teesta Setalvad and her NGO, sought re-trial on the grounds that she had been intimidated into lying before the court in the course of the original trial.

This may seem like a reasonable scenario. But since the re-trial opened, Setalvad had taken control of Zaheera and her family. She repeatedly refused to let the Vadodra police meet Zaheera to get her statement regarding the complaint that she had received death threats during the original Best Bakery trial. The police had issued over 15 summons to meet Zaheera but not once had they been able to contact her because of Teesta Setalvad’s tactics.

Finally… after much tribulations, the re-trial opened in a special Mazagaon court on October 5, 2004. Since then, a couple of witnesses have ‘identified‘ the accused in court. But the second of those witnesses has already weakened the case by admitting later that he had held back information during his deposition and that some information had ’slipped his mind’ (in our pinko sister, Teesta’s, words).

And now, in an unexpected turn of events today, Zaheera Shaikh has accused Teesta Setalvad of pressurizing her into making statements.

“Zaheera today said that what she said in the Fast Track court in Vadodara during the trial was true and that the NGO activist Teetsa Setalvad was pressurising her to name innocent persons during the retrial at the Mumbai court,” Vadodara police comissioner S K Sinha said.

In an affidavit Zaheera filed with Vadodara Collector, she asked police to protect her from Setalvad and also during the on-going re-trial in the special court at Mumbai, the commissioner said.

Zaheera claimed that she was forcibly taken to Mumbai by some locals at the behest of Setalvad and also made to sign several documents that were in English.

The crucial eyewitness also said Setalvad had “threatened her with dire consequences” if she did not cooperate with the developments in the case and had closeted her in Mumbai, Sinha said.

So, as we all know, the torch-bearer of ’secularism’ and the scourge of communalism in India (snigger snigger) is not such an innocent crusader after all! ;-)

Oh by the way, Zaheera Shaikh also accused the Mumbai police of towing Setalvad’s line in the case. In the light of this, the disappearance of a witness from police custody assumes a different meaning, doesn’t it?!

Update:
Teesta Setalvad has rubbished Zaheera’s claims as a ‘pack of lies‘. That’s strange, because it seriously undermines the prosecution case in this re-trial. Accusing your own witness of lying is certainly not the best way of convincing the judge, now is it?! But then, it seems like Setalvad cares less about the case and more about her own image!