'Accused' were turned into angels

VADODARA: That the case of the prosecution had collapsed in the Best Bakery carnage was known during the initial stages of the hearings with one witness after another turning hostile.
But no one expected all the 21 accused to be portrayed as ''life-saving angels'' in the court of judge HU Mahida, who later acquitted all of them. That was until a Muslim, Lal Mohammed, told the court that all the accused had in fact saved the lives of the victims.That shook the very foundation of the case.
One would have, however, expected the prosecution to defend their case by intensively cross-examining Mohammed. Instead, they preferred not to confront him even as he ''improved'' upon his police statements in favour of the accused. Initially, he had told the police that two out of the 21 had saved lives. In court, he said all the 21 were lifesavers.
The only thing that the prosecution managed to find after examining Mohammed was that the 21 accused had saved 65 Muslims in the area, including 18 members of his family. The question then arises is why were the all the 21 accused, living in surrounding localities, present in one particular house at the time of the incident?
Referring to two of the accused, Harshad Solanki alias Munna and Dinesh Rajbhar, Mohammed had stated that as his family of 18 people were trying to escape, Dinesh had warned them by shouting ''Chacha bhaag jao''. At that time, Munna asked them to come into his house.
His family stayed at Munna''s house till the next morning. Lal Mohammed had then rattled everybody by stating that he knew all the 21 accused and that all of them took care of the family throughout the night.
After his deposition, Lal Mohammed disappeared from Vadodara and surfaced only when the National Human Rights Commission team visited the city. He had given interviews alleging that complainant Zahira was lying.
Even the amended appeal of the state government in the case has said that from the deposition of witness Lal Mohammed, the presence of accused at the time of the alleged incident proved that there was sufficient evidence on record to connect the accused to the alleged crime.
“Although Lal Mohammed had improved upon his police statements before the court, he was not cross-examined. It''s even more intriguing when the prosecution did not confront him with questions to establish the presence of the accused in a particular house. The prosecution has completely failed to perform its duties,� said Mihir Desai, counsel in Supreme Court for Zahira Sheikh.
“Things like this are going on through out the state. It is nothing but part of the larger design to secure acquittals of the accused," said eminent lawyer and human rights activist Girish Patel.
The Vadodara city police has now registered an offence against Mohammed and others for allegedly issuing threats to Zahira''s brother Nafitullah.
The district government pleader in the case, Raghuvir Pandya, refused to comment on how the 21 accused could be present in one house at the time of the incident. “I am not an engineer who can explain such matters,� he said.