Best Bakery: Eyewitness identifies 7 accused

An eyewitness in the Best Bakery case identified seven accused in the court in Mumbai on Wednesday. Ahmed Habibullah, an employee of the bakery, identified the men as members of the crowd who tied up the bakery workers and torched them on the night of March 1, 2002.

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Deposing before designated Judge Abhay Thipsay, Habibullah said the rioters asked the workers assembled on the terrace of the bakery to come down, assuring them no harm would come to them. He said the group of people then put up a ladder and helped the workers to climb down.

Then they tied their hands and feet and pushed them into the bakery premises. The helpless workers were later assaulted with swords and set on fire, he told prosecutor Manjula Rao.

Taufel said he too was injured in the attack. He showed the court injuries in the neck, head, chest, right leg and palm. Toufiq said he remembered having seen three women and four children being killed in the attack.

He also said that two bakery workers, Baliram Prasad and Ramesh, had died in the assault. The witness had on Tuesday told the court that he had worked in the bakery for two years.

Fourteen people, most of them Muslims, were burnt alive when a crowd set ablaze the Best Bakery on March 1, 2002. Although 21 accused were tried by a fast track court, they were acquitted after witnesses turned hostile. The Gujarat High Court upheld the lower court's acquittal order.

Later, the prime accused Zaheera Sheikh moved the Supreme Court, with the help of an NGO, seeking retrial on the grounds that she was intimidated during the earlier trial.