Zaheera and other family members to file reply tomorrow

Mumbai, Mar 19 (UNI) Zaheera Sheikh, prime witness in the Best Bakery case, and her family members including brother, sister and mother will file their replies tomorrow to the perjury notice issued by a Special Court in Mumbai, asking them to state why action should not be taken against them for giving false statements in court.

Additional Sessions Judge Abhay Thipsay, who presided over the re-trial of Best Bakery Case of Gujarat, had issued a show cause notice to Zaheera, her sister Saira, brother Nasibullah and mother Saherunissa which is returnable tomorrow, after convicting nine others on February 24.

During re-trial, Zaheera and her other family members had retracted their earlier statements and were declared hostile by the prosecution. They had also turned hostile before the Fast Track court in Vadodara, resulting in all the 21 accused being acquitted by the court due to lack of evidence.

While sentencing nine accused to life imprisonment and acquitting eights other on February 24 after the conclusion of the retrial of the case on the direction of the Apex court, Mr Thipsay had issued perjury notice for March 20 to Zaheera and her family members for changing their statements during the course of re-trial.

The last time when Zaheera was produced in the court was to decide where she would have to undergo the one-year sentence imposed by the Supreme Court for her flip-flops as the prime witness in Best Bakery case, in Mumbai prison or in Gujarat.

The Apex court had punished her for making false affidavit (second) in the court.

She had surrendered before Special court in Mumbai on March 10, two days after the Supreme Court sentenced her to a year's simple imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000.

The apex court in April, 2004, while ordering re-trial outside Gujarat for witnesses to depose without any fear, had quashed the Vadodara court's order acquitting all the 21 accused in the case. Of them, 17 were re-arrested and brought to Mumbai for retrial, while the remaining four, still untraceable, were declared absconding.

UNI ST KU LR BD1557