Zaheera’s Shake

Zaheera was as vocal before officials. ‘‘It was a dance of death that continued all night. The roof top was hot and our feet were turning red. We had no option but to hide behind the parapet,’’ she told the police. The statement became the basis of an FIR filed by the Panigate police.

Four children and three women died that night in the Best Bakery building. The next morning, when some of the survivors tried to flee, five people were killed by the waiting mob, two were chased to nearby fields and murdered in the dawn light.

Despite the toll it took on her, Zaheera told her story over and over for the press, the relief committee members, government officials. ‘‘The police would abuse me, they would make me wait from morning till evening for compensation,’’ she complained one year after the Best Bakery incident, her credentials established as the case’s star witness.

Home, sweet home

BARELY eight months later, the Vadodara police are her best friends, her security cover, her passport to the life she once knew. ‘‘The Vadodara court judgment was right. I got justice here,’’ Zaheera, 20, announced on Wednesday at a city hotel as senior policemen looked on.

The Vadodara-Mumbai-Vadodara part of Zaheera’s life may be just 16 months old—she moved to the metro under activist Teesta Setalvad’s care on July 7, 2003—but she has probably travelled further along that road than her father did while moving from Basti, in Uttar Pradesh, to Vadodara in search of a better life in 1990.

Habibullah Sheikh started off working at a bakery; before long, he had set up his own Best Bakery in Hanuman Tekri, a poor locality dominated by migrants from eastern UP. He died just a month before the March madness that changed the life of his family members, possibly forever.

Is Zaheera’s volte-face a desperate attempt to turn the clock back to a simpler time? Or is it the baser instinct of greed at work? Speculation for the reason behind the about-turn runs the whole gamut among Zaheera’s one-time neighbours.

‘‘Their family was always tadak-bhadak (flashy and loud),’’ says Maqsood Diwan, neighbours of the Sheikhs at Hanuman Tekri and the post-riots relief camp. ‘‘We almost died when we saw Zaheera issuing her latest statement on television. We feel stabbed in the back.’’

There’s also the Shrivastava factor. Most locals swear by the help extended by BJP MLA Madhu and his Congress councillor brother Chandrakant in settling them in.

Flip-flop fashion

THOUGH Zaheera’s latest stand—that she accused innocent persons under pressure from Setalvad and that BJP legislator Madhu Shrivastava had no role to play in her earlier court statements—has no evidentiary value, it is a blow for the prosecution’s case in the retrial being currently conducted in Mumbai.

Locals believe there is a pattern to Zaheera’s flip-flops. For instance, the NGO People’s Union for Civil Liberties offered to help her complete her school education in Maharashtra. After agreeing initially, she did not take up the opportunity. Ditto with her younger brother. Though provided books and an SSC admit card, he did not appear for the board exams.

Hanuman Tekri resident Rahmatullah, now state president of the National Loktantrik Party, remembers sheltering Nafitullah—Zaheera’s elder brother—when he fell out with his mother after his marriage to a Hindu. ‘‘He paid me back by taking me to visit Madhu Shrivastava, who threatened me,’’ he says.

Even as the Vadodara police investigate this complaint, Rahmatullah is planning a defamation suit against the entire family. ‘‘Zaheera is a black spot on womanhood, on Islam and the UP Muslims residing here. She has made us lose credibility,’’ he alleges.

So who is the real Zaheera? A victim of circumstances? An opportunist with an eye for the main chance? Or just a simple girl who wants her life back? Chances are the truth about her is somewhere out there—with the truth of the Best Bakery case.

‘Zaheera has hurt her own credibility’

Teesta Setalvad fought for the Best Bakery retrial. And she says that case is still strong, regardless of what Zaheera says

THIS was a peculiar blow for a journalist-activist who has ranted against fascist Hindu leaders for over a decade, coming as it did from a young Muslim woman who had become the face of the Citizens Vs Pogrom court saga.

‘‘For the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP),’’ she says of the organisation she’s secretary of, ‘‘it’s never been about Hindu or Muslim. It’s pure luck that the Best Bakery trial came up first. The Godhra trial is also in the list.’’

Expectedly, the co-editor of Communalism Combat denies every allegation by Zaheera and Narendra Modi. ‘‘Look at the timing,’’ she says. Twenty-four hours later, Zaheera was to depose in court.

Setalvad refuses to say much about how the relationship soured, but admits she’d ‘‘felt’’ for nearly a fortnight that Zaheera and her mother’s behaviour had ‘‘changed’’. They weren’t discussing the case as earlier, then the mother had an angry outburst when policemen and a CJP activist went to serve summons.

‘‘First she told the Mumbai police she didn’t want any protection, then she says I held her hostage. How can that be?’’

The case is still very strong, CJP’s activists—members include adman Alyque Padamsee, lyricist Javed Akhtar, columnist Anil Dharker, playwright Vijay Tendulkar—believe. As for Zaheera, Setalvad admits she may have misjudged her, but adds quickly that it’s still too early to say, since the girl’s motivations remain unknown. ‘‘It’s sad that she chose to hurt her own credibility,’’ she says. ‘‘She can’t say one thing in court, something else in Supreme Court and then flip-flop.’’

Kavitha Iyer

‘Zaheera has vindicated my stand’

BJP legislator Madhu Shrivastava isn’t one of the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case. But that’s not why he can’t stop smiling

BJP legislator Madhu Shrivastava and his brother Chandrakant are not among the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case. Their names became inextricably linked with the carnage, however, when Zaheera Shaikh and her mother Sehrunnisa alleged in July 2003 that the Shrivastavas had threatened them into lying in court.

‘‘I have always maintained that I was falsely implicated in the case. Zaheera’s recent statement vindicates my stand,’’ says Madhu. ‘‘Allah Taala has given Zaheera the sadbuddhi (good sense) to speak the truth during the month of Ramzan.’’

Dismissing the charge that he played communal politics, he claims, ‘‘Even when Gujarat was burning, there wasn’t a single Muslim casualty in my mixed-population constituency, Waghodia.

‘‘My name was dragged into the case by my political opponent. Even when I went to the US in October 2003, after Zaheera and her mother field affidavits against me in the Supreme Court, the word was that I had run away from impending arrest. While the truth is that I was organising Navratri garbas and religious functions.’’

While Zaheera’s statement takes the wind out of the sails of her previous accusations of coercion and threat, the 21 accused continue to face re-trial. Among them are tea vendors Tulsibhai, Kamlesh and Shailesh Tadvi; mason Pratapsinh Ravjibhai Chauhan; truck-driver Yasin Khokhar and labourer Jagdish Chunilal Rajput.

Syed Khalique Ahmed