Best Bakery: Zaheera’s mother denies statement made at retrial

Other accused in this trial are Zaheera, her brother Nasibullah and sister Sahira.

The judge, one by one, read out all the statements of SEHERUNNISA, which are believed by the court to be false and asked her to state her explanations thereon. But Seherunnisa’s explanation, in respect to all the statements, was that they were not made by her. ‘‘Do you want to say that your statements were wrongly recorded,’’ the judge asked every time and her reply was consistently in the affirmative.

Thipsay indicated, at the end of today’s proceedings, that he would decide on her case tomorrow.

Prior to Seherunnisa’s examination, defence lawyer Umesh Deshpande challenged the court’s jurisdiction to try Zaheera and her family members stating that the accused did not have confidence in the judge and they were not able to ‘‘express themselves’’ properly before him.

But Thipsay rejected this argument, terming it as ‘‘ridiculous’’. The criminal procedure code gives any court the power to try the witnesses for giving false evidence, the judge held.

Most of the statements of SEHERUNNISA, held to be false by the court, are related to the incidents on the night of March 1, 2002, when the Best Bakery was burnt by a mob.

• One of these was that three servants who were killed in the attack on bakery, got down along with her and her family when the police arrived on the scene. The judge refused to believe this.

When asked about this contradiction at the examination today, SEHERUNNISA said she did not know what happened to these three servants, and she had never said they were alive when the police arrived.

• She also disowned her statement that she knew that people in her neighbourhood were not in the mob that attacked the bakery. This statement too had been held as false by the judge, because it contradicted another of her statement that she could not see who were the attackers.

Earlier, when advocate Deshpande moved the application challenging court’s jurisdiction, the judge asked SEHERUNNISA whether she knew about the application. But to the embarrassment of her lawyer, she said she did not know about it. She only said that she had instructed her lawyer to ‘‘file application in Supreme Court’’.

The judge, while dismissing the application, took advocate Deshpande to task for ‘‘attempt to delay the proceedings by filing such applications’’.