| Dramatic Twist  | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | SHEIKH: Flip-flop witness | | AHMEDABAD The slapping of life imprisonment last week on nine of the 21 accused in Vadodara's infamous Best Bakery case by Mumbai sessions court judge Abhay Thipsay was the culmination of a legal journey full of many twists and turns. The judgement has evoked diametrically opposite views. One section dubs it as good for the Indian judiciary, while another says it could lead to miscarriage of justice in future. As many as 14 persons, including two Hindus, were killed by a Hindu mob in Best Bakery on March 1, 2002, in the aftermath of the killing of 58 Hindus allegedly by a Muslim mob in Godhra. All the accused in the case were acquitted in 2003 when Zahira Sheikh, the daughter of the owner of Best Bakery and also a key witness in the case, turned hostile in a special fast track court. The Gujarat High Court upheld the acquittal. Then, egged on by a powerful movement led by social rights activist Teesta Setalvad, Sheikh applied to the Supreme Court saying that the Hindutva brigade had put pressure on her to turn hostile. The apex court found substance in her plea and passed an unprecedented order in April 2004: a retrial of the case in Maharashtra. Sheikh did another flip-flop then and said that Setalvad had made her target the Hindutva camp. Setalvad hinted that Sheikh's new stand was the result of "pressure or inducement" from the Hindutva brigade. There are sharp differences in the responses of those who had a stake in the judgement. Anup Tadvi, whose two sons were convicted, accuses "pro-Muslim human rights activists" of hijacking the judiciary. What lends credence to his charge is the fact that the same activists who put pressure on the Supreme Court to order a retrial in the Best Bakery case are defending the Muslims accused in the Godhra carnage. But the Muslims in Vadodara are more than happy. Said Zuber Goplani, a social worker, "The judgement gives hope to Gujarat riot victims." The law has taken its own course. The debate over the case will take its own. -By Uday Mahurkar
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