Ahmedabad, Nov. 24: The identity of the organisers of Zahira Sheikh?s news conference in Vadodara earlier this month has been confirmed.

Tushar Vyas and Ajay Joshi, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad?s Vadodara president, both advocates, had arranged the conference where the Best Bakery witness did a somersault and accused Mumbai-based rights activist Teesta Setalvad of ?tutoring? her to implicate innocent people in the March 2002 carnage.

Setalvad had helped Zahira seek a retrial after all the accused were set free by a fast-track court in Vadodara. Zahira lost a sister and an uncle in the carnage.

Vyas claimed Zahira had approached his little-known NGO, the Janadhikar Samiti, for help. ?She approached me because I was a practising advocate and well known in legal circles,? he said today.

Vyas added that the role of the NGO, of which he is the founder trustee, was limited to assisting Zahira with the news conference ? held at Hotel Surya Palace ? and other arrangements while she was in Vadodara. He admitted to financial assistance.

Asked about his part in the conference, Joshi did not deny his role.

At the conference, when reporters threw questions at her about the organisers, Zahira chose not to answer.

The names of Joshi and Vyas cropped up after Zahira?s brother Nafitullah last Friday told the special court in Mumbai ? that is holding the retrial ? that the ?Janadhikar Samiti? bore the Vadodara expenses. Joshi is a Samiti member.

Advocate Atul Mistry, who was seen with Zahira at the news conference, recalled today that ?Zahira had told me that the Samiti would pay her bills?.

The Samiti was first informally floated by Vyas ? who is said to have an affinity for RSS ideology ? in the wake of the Godhra train attack of 2002. The organisation took formal shape after the bakery trial by the Vadodara court was termed a ?miscarriage of justice?? by Justice A.S. Anand, the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission.

In Mumbai today, Nafitullah ? who like Zahira has turned hostile ? said in the special court that Setalvad and her colleague Raees Khan told him they would show him photographs of some men, whom he would then have to identify as the perpetrators of the carnage in which 14 people were killed.

During his cross-examination by the prosecution, Nafitullah further said Setalvad and Khan had also asked him to make false statements in court.

Nafitullah told the court he did not know how his other sister, Sabira, died in the carnage and he made no enquiries about it either. He added he did not know the whereabouts of his uncle Qausar, who too was killed in the bakery attack.