Zahira: Taking a break

Ahmedabad, Feb. 4: Hours before she was to depose before the Godhra inquiry commission, Zahira Sheikh, the Best Bakery witness who has turned hostile, sent a fax message that she would not be able to come because of ?ill health??.

In the message from Vadodara today, she said: ?I am ill and totally exhausted after the marathon cross-examination at Mazgaon Court in Mumbai. So I need some time to rest before I get ready to record my testimony.?

The commission has now asked her to personally appear on February 23, implying that even if she does not want to depose, she should come to tell the commission that or send her lawyer to explain why she is unable to make it. Sending fax messages will not do.

The G.T. Nanavati Commission, probing the Godhra train deaths and the post-Godhra communal riots, had summoned Zahira to depose after advocate Mukul Sinha, representing civil rights group Jan Sangharsh Manch, filed an application requesting that he be allowed to cross-examine her as she has been frequently changing her statements.

Zahira had filed an affidavit before the commission in June 2002 in which she gave a graphic account of the attack on Best Bakery that left 14 people dead and also named the accused. Then she turned hostile, leading to the acquittal of all 21 accused in the Best Bakery case.

Later, Zahira said she had been under pressure not to tell the truth and sought retrial of the case outside Gujarat. But when the retrial was granted, she did another somersault and alleged that social activist Teesta Setalvad had ?coerced?? and ?tutored?? her to name innocent people.

?So it will be interesting to know whether she had filed a false affidavit or she is telling a lie now ? that she cannot identify any of the accused she had named in the Bakery massacre case,?? said advocate Sinha.