Witnesses hostile,case on the brink

The case against him has come a full circle 10 years later.

The highway cutting through greenery and leading to the village of Kidiyad in Sabarkantha district of central Gujarat lifts the mood,unless one allows in the memories of March 2,2002,when 75 Muslims fleeing their village in two mini trucks to Lunawada in the Panchmahals district were burnt to death.

Leading the rioters at Limbadiya chowk in the Panchmahals was Kalu Maliwad,who was let off after witnesses turned hostile in the court. Maliwad went on to become a BJP MLA from Lunawada in the December 2002 polls. He was last seen organising CM Narendra Modis Sadbhavana mission fast in Godhra on January 20.

The former MLA has a reason to breathe easy. The case against him has come a full circle 10 years later. After the Godhra sessions court acquitted Maliwad and eight others in 2002,the state government filed an appeal in the high court. The police also extended the investigation on the basis of statements of witnesses and submitted three more chargesheets against 23 new accused in the massacre case which is not being probed by the Supreme Court-appointed SIT.

In the re-trial which started January last year,26 of the 37 witnesses turned hostile. They denied the police ever recorded their statements and absolved the accused. In the earlier trial,the prosecution was criticised for ignoring the trend of witnesses turning hostile. Public prosecutor Dushyant Pathak pleads helplessness. We cant do anything about this witnesses turning hostile except for declaring them hostile and contradict their statements to court and police.

If,the court acquits the accused on the basis of the retracted statement of a witness,we may write to the legal department to initiate perjury proceedings against such witnesses, he says.

Salim Sindhi,one of the witnesses,says nearly 100-120 Muslims of Kidiyad had left their village in two tempo trucks to move to a safer place in Modasa after communal tension gripped the state following the Godhra carnage.

When we reached Limbadiya chowk,a mob of Hindus armed with sharp-edged weapons attacked the two tempo-trucks and killed around 75 people, says Sindhi,who was in one of the ill-fated tempo trucks.

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Today,the Muslim locality of Kidiyad still wears a deserted look.Of the total 100-120 Muslim families that lived here then,only 10 have returned. The rest settled in Modasa. Salim Sindhi,who was then the sarpanch of Kidiyad,says of the 200 homes in the village then,50 were of Muslims. Today,the Thakor community rules here with around 100 houses.

We have got land in the village. There is no point staying in Modasa if we are to cultivate crops for survival. We are not happy with what happened but,one needs to move on, says Nanumiyan Sindhi,who has rebuilt his mud home.