Zaheera’s brother retracts statement

Nafitullah Sheikh, the sixth eye-witness in the Best Bakery case, today retracted his police statement in the trial court, saying his wife a...

Nafitullah Sheikh, the sixth eye-witness in the Best Bakery case, today retracted his police statement in the trial court, saying his wife and other family members were not present at the bakery when a mob set it on fire on March 1, 2002.

In his police statement, Nafitullah — elder brother of Zaheera Sheikh, the prime witness in the Best Bakery case — had said that his wife Yasmin, mother and sister were injured in the attack on the bakery.

In his deposition before the court today, Nafitullah told prosecutor Manjula Rao during cross-examination that his wife, mother and sister were not present at the bakery at the relevant time and hence there was no question of them getting injured in the attack.

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Nafitullah, who turned hostile in the case on November 19, said he did not know how their presence in the bakery on the day of the incident figured in his police statement. He also denied that his grandmother was present at the bakery at the time of attack. He said that he had not told the police about it and was unable to say how it appeared in his police statement.

The witness replied in the negative when the prosecutor asked him whether Jayanti Chaiwala, Pratap, Munna, Jayanti’s son, Mahesh, Kiran, social worker Thakker, Painter and Jeetu were part of the mob that had attacked the bakery.

When asked how he could confidently deny that they were present when he had earlier told the court that he could not see anyone in the dark, Nafitullah said he meant that he did not know those named.