Best Bakery site plan produced in court

MUMBAI: A rough plan of Best Bakery in Vadodra and its surrounding area was produced in the sessions court at Mazgaon on Monday. It was made by Ratilal Waria, a small-time building planner from Vadodra, who deposed before sessions judge Abhay Thipsay as the first witness in the Best Bakery trial on Monday.
During the Gujarat 2002 riots, 14 persons were charred to death when they were taking refuge inside the bakery at Hanuman Tekri in Vadodara on March 1, 2002.
Waria told the court that he had drawn the rough schematic drawing of the bakery and the surrounding residential area on June 29, 2002. "It took me six to seven hours to walk around the site and draw the plan on the same day," Waria said.
However, senior defence counsel Adhik Shirodkar argued before the court that the rough plan was not drawn by Waria. "The plan does not have an accurate scale, nor does it have other technical details. Secondly, it does not bear Waria''s signature or any other sign which can prove that the plan was indeed drawn by him and not somebody else," Shirodkar said.
Waria explained to the court that he was told to draw the plan at the last minute. "I was told to draw the plan only one day prior to my visit by local land record official (mamledar) C K Patel. Hence, there was no time to draw as per scale. All the dimensions mentioned in the plan are approximate figures," Waria said.
Producing photographs of Best Bakery and the actual site of the crime, Shirodkar said the witness (Waria) had overlooked several technical details such as plinth level, staircase landing, passageway, ceiling height and the first-floor balcony grill of the bakery in his plan. However, public prosecutor Manjula Rao, who heads the prosecution after the demise of senior counsel P R Vakil on October 1, said fresh pictures clicked by the defence could have several changes vis-a-vis the way the site looked at the time of the crime n 2002.
Amidst tight security, 17 accused persons and the six witness were produced in the court on Monday. So far, those arrested in the Best Bakery trial are Rajubhai Baris, Yogesh Varma, Harish Gosai, Pankaj Gosai, Mahendra Jadav, Pratapsinh Solanki, Bahadursinh Chauhan, Yasin Khokhar, Jagdish Rajput, Dinesh Rajbhar, Shanabhai Baria, Tulsi Tadvi, Shailesh Tadvi, Kamlesh Tadvi, Suresh Vasava and Ravi Chauhan.