Now daughter breaks the ‘fearful’ silence

But Madhu Shrivastava, a regular fixture in the trial was the one who accompanied Zaheera to the court on the day of her testimony. He is on record as saying that he welcomed the acquittal verdict claiming that the wrong people were framed.

Zaheera’s statement comes as a team from the National Human Rights Commission is scheduled to reach Vadodara tomorrow. NHRC chief Justice A S Anand had called the Best Bakery verdict a ‘‘miscarriage of justice.’’

Zaheera, 19, had gone into hiding after she turned hostile during the case proceedings in a fast-track court in Vadodara which acquitted all the 21 accused. Fourteen people were killed in the Best Bakery massacre, nine of them were the Sheikhs’ relatives.

After The Indian Express story, Zaheera was moved to Mumbai by the Citizens for Justice and Peace, a local social activist group. Also present were her mother and her two brothers.

Hours before she addressed the press, flanked by the group’s members, Zaheera told The Indian Express: ‘‘Amma sab sahi boli hain, hum tab dar gaye the, magar ab sachh bolenge, ab to saath bhi mil gaya hai, aur hum saath hain (My mother has spoken the truth, we were frightened then. Now we will speak the truth, now we have got the support).’’

When asked about allegations that she received money, she said: ‘‘I can’t bear such an accusation. Everyone says that we took money.’’

Zaheera has come a long way from her days more than a year ago in Vadodara where she had waged a lone battle from Day One of the riots: trying to get medical support for the family on March 2, as the wounded and dead were being brought to Vadodara’s SSG Hospital from Best Bakery.

And thereafter it has been depositions before numerous commissions, changing houses and finally moving to the one built in Ektanagar by the riot relief committee.

Now that they are in Mumbai, both mother and daughter say they feel safer. Said Sehrunissa: ‘‘I got very scared once I spoke out but here I feel safer.’’