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!
10 comments
You’re jumping the gun here. Just because Teesta is leftist does not mean she is automatically dishonest. The picture on the Best Bakery retrial looks very hazy now, but to question Teesta and claim that she’s done this to get funds is much too strong. The only thing we know now is that Zaheera is an unreliable witness and the case will suffer to some extent.
Teesta has been working in the area for the last 20 + years. She doesn’t need to kidnap a Zaheera — she was working with the riot victims in Gujarat much before that.
Your sniggers are perplexing. Wait a little. Otherwise the joke will be on you.
Disclosure: I know Teesta personally. And I am indirectly involved with the CJP. On a personal gut level, I very much doubt that they would indulge in what Zaheera is accusing them of. I may disagree with their economics, but I trust and respect them.
Yazad >> I am not saying Teesta is dishonest. Only that based on what I’ve been hearing in the media, she is not coming off as an innocent social worker. Not knowing her personally, this makes it a common man’s view.
The Best Bakery re-trial has been centered around Zaheera’s claims about being threatened into giving a false testimony at the original trial. Having been personally associated with Zaheera and her family, Teesta should’ve had at least some idea if the ‘prime witness’ was telling the truth or getting her 15 minutes of fame.
For the joke to be on me, it will take a miracle, now that the prime witness has been proven to be dishonest! In any case, I am ready to be the butt of the joke.
Ohh… and by the way, my views on Teesta aren’t entirely influenced by this episode or by her being a leftist. They have a lot to do with her views on other matters.
Which other matters?
Yazad asked Which other matters prove Teesta te be biased and dishonest besides here being a leftist. Ok, she was the first ’secularist’ pinko fundamentalist to justify the Godhra Carnage. You can verify it by checking the newspapers of day after 59 people were burnt alive in Godhra. Her statement was “…we should keep in mind that these people (the victims including months old kids) were not going for any peacefull assembly. There intention was to engage in unlawful activities by participating in kar seva…”.
OK, first they were not going to Ayodhya. They were coming from Ayodhya without engaging in any unlawful activity. They were going to their hoems in Ammedabad (which even Yazad would agree is not any unlawful assembly.)
I am always curious about activists.Why do they do what they do and how they survive? Who pays for their work and what is in it for them? Having villified the Modi Govt. in no uncertain manner by all the english press, can i get more than a glimse of who this Teesta is and what is her past?
Well Yazad… apart from what Deejay has posted, here’s an extract from Teesta’s acceptance speech at Nuremberg last September. She had been awarded the International Human Rights Award.
“Pivotal to this peace is a resolution of the Kashmir conflict after calling people from the Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh region to the negotiation table. It is a shame that instead of leading a discourse within the region on peace, on sanity, on tolerance, India today takes a part in articulating shrill noises against neighbours. We even led the sub-continent on its deplorable road towards turning nuclear.”
Hmmm!!
Deejay, If she really said that, then I’m apalled. But somehow I doubt it.
Shiv, She’s a lawyer and runs a magazine called Communalism Combat. BTW, a simple google search would yield loads of results!
Sameer, that’s quite an ordinary statement. She’s anti-nuclear weapons. But please note her restraint compared to someone like Arundhati. Teesta’s leftist but is also someone whom I can have a conversation with.
Teesta vs. Taveleen
There is a very interesting exchange of views between Tavleen Singh and Teesta Setalvad in the Indian Express. Teesta and Javed Anand (her husband and co-editor of Communalism Combat) also list a sample of Communalism Combat cover stories, special repo…
The debate is interesting. There are some more interesting facts to note:
CJP
AID - (headed by the famous naxal sympathiser Sandeep Pandey)
Asha and lot of other left leaning NGOs also involved violent student organizations like SYFI and DYFI in Tsunami aid. this was posted on their website by their tamil nadu co-ordinator and is available if you do a google search… Is that why NRIs donated so generously to Tsunami aid so that it can be used in destructive activities.
The most important thing is that on the Communalism Combat webste http://www.sabrang.com
inspite of charges levelled against her, the link for sponsors is there but no sponsors. Most of the well rated NGOs are very open as a part of good corporate governance practices to disclose these details ?
why are teesta and her husband not divulging their sponsors ? something definitely fishy here….
Well… shes vindicated if the decision of the M
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