Zahira: Behind bars

Mumbai, March 11: Zahira Sheikh’s one-year sentence has already begun, the public prosecutor in the Best Bakery case said today.

The witness, who was found guilty of contempt of court for changing her stand repeatedly and handed the jail term and a Rs 50,000 fine by the Supreme Court on March 8, surrendered last evening.

Zahira will on Monday be produced in the special court in Mumbai where the Best Bakery retrial was held. On February 24, the court had sentenced nine accused to life and issued perjury notices to Zahira and her family.

Since the verdict, Zahira had been untraceable till she surrendered yesterday. Dire circumstances led her to give herself up, her lawyer and friends said. “She called me up at 5 in the evening from Mumbai, just before surrendering,” one of her lawyers, D.P. Garg, said from Delhi. “I also advised her to surrender, as the situation would become worse for her if she didn’t.”

Maharashtra and Gujarat police had been looking for her. But she was in Mumbai all along, living in a small, shabby flat in the northern suburb of Bhayander with mother Shehrunnisa, sister Sahira and her husband. After the surrender, the family left the flat in Varsha Apartments at Azad Nagar in Bhayander, where they had been living since June.

Accused of accepting a bribe to change her statements, her friends say she was living in poverty now. “Whatever she did, she is a victim of circumstances and doesn’t have any money,” Garg said.

“Her elder brother Nafitullah died because of lack of proper treatment. Before that, he was working as a kabariwallah in Vadodara.”

Nafitullah, who was being treated for septicaemia in the city, died on March 3. Along with younger brother Nasibullah, Zahira, Sahira and Shehrunnisa, he, too, had turned hostile during the retrial.

One of Zahira’s friends in the city said: “Her brother’s illness and death had been a huge blow for the family and also a drain monetarily. ”

Also, her “protectors” in Gujarat have abandoned her. “It was made clear by the fact that she told the court yesterday that she was afraid to go back to Gujarat,” he said. It is alleged that a BJP MLA from Vadodara, Madhu Srivasatava, bribed Zahira to change her statement in court and provided her with security.