The TV news bulletin interrupts Mahendra Jadhav’s concentration. He looks up from a two-wheeler he’s trying to fix outside his house in Hanuman Tekri: news is coming in of the NHRC moving the Supreme Court. ‘‘Do you think the Best Bakery case will really be re-opened?’’ Jadhav wants to know. A mechanic, he’s one of the 21 suspects acquitted by a fast-track court in the case. The NHRC’s special leave petition in the Supreme Court is worrying families in Hanuman Tekri. Relatives of those acquitted huddle together and discuss the news in hushed tones. Some say the appeal has no meaning. ‘‘It will hardly make a difference. The court has announced its verdict. My brother is innocent,’’ says Bharat Thakkar, whose brother Sanjay spent time in jail as a suspect in the case. ‘‘And my brother isn’t in hiding, okay?’’ he shouts at this reporter. ‘‘He’s on a business trip to Halol. Why should he be worried when he’s innocent?’’ But the news weighs heavy on Jadhav who has just returned from Shirdi where he had gone a pilgrimage after his acquittal. ‘‘My life has been ruined by the police. They implicated me in the case. I was put behind bars for 15 months for a crime I did not commit,’’ he says, adding his workshop while he was in jail. ‘‘Many of my clients were Muslims. Despite the court giving me a clean chit, they are unwilling to give me work,’’ he says. ‘‘Will the NHRC appeal on my behalf?’’ Budhabhai Parmar says the case brought him troubles even though he himself was not an accused. His brother-in-law Sanabhai Baria went to jail in the case and Parmar has had to take care of Baria’s wife and teenaged daughter, who live in a one-room hovel right behind Best Bakery. Baria was last seen at Hanuman Tekri the day he was released from jail after the judgment. ‘‘Maybe he’s at his native village. We don’t know,’’ says Parmar. ‘‘All I know is that I earn Rs 50 daily and, apart from my family, have to take care of his wife and daughter. There’s no one to listen to us.’’ Asked if they received any help from Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Madhu Shrivastava — who the witnesses alleged was behind threats which made them turn hostile — Parmar says: ‘‘We are small people, who bothers about us.’’ At the house of another accused, Ravi Chauhan, the reaction is one of anger. His father Rajaram, who runs a grocery shop, refuses to say anything or let the press talk to his son. Neighbours of Rajubhai Baria, another accused in the case, say they do not know his whereabouts. ‘‘He must have gone to his village,’’ they say. ‘‘Once in a while, he comes here to look at his house.’’ And Yasinbhai Khokhar, a Muslim accused in the case, is also missing. Neighbours say he’s a truck driver and is rarely seen. ‘‘He goes on work and returns once in several days,’’ they say.
