Zahira: No respite

Mumbai, March 29: Zahira Sheikh, who says she prefers jail in Gujarat, was today ordered by a sessions court here to serve her one-year term in Mumbai, where she apparently fears for her life.

Judge Abhay Thipsay, however, said the Best Bakery prime witness would be shifted if the Supreme Court, which had handed her the jail term and a Rs 50,000 fine for contempt of court, so ordered.

Zahira has filed a review petition in the apex court pleading a reduction of the sentence and permission to serve the term in Gujarat where ? in her latest flip-flop ? she claims she would be safer.

Her lawyer wanted the sessions judge to defer a decision till the Supreme Court came out with its ruling, but Thipsay said he couldn’t wait any longer. He ordered Mumbai police to lodge Zahira in the city’s Byculla jail and asked her to pay the fine.

He said Zahira’s term may be adjusted against the period she has already spent in custody after she surrendered before the court on March 10.

Zahira, convicted for repeatedly changing her testimony in the Best Bakery trials in Vadodara and Mumbai, had also done a U-turn over where she wanted to serve her jail term.

After saying time and again that she wouldn’t be safe in Gujarat, she suddenly said she feared for her life in Mumbai and would prefer a Vadodara jail.

Thipsay adjourned till April 7 the hearing on the show-cause notices issued to Zahira, her mother Sehrunnisa, sister Saira and brother Nasibullah for perjury. Last week, Zahira and Nasibullah had asked for time to respond. They had pleaded they did not have a copy of the judgment pronounced on February 24, when the judge had pulled them up for giving false testimony.

Thipsay had then said they would be given a copy of the judgment on March 27, and asked them to appear today to answer the notices.

A mob had massacred 14 people in Vadodara’s Best Bakery on March 1, 2002, two days after a fire in the Sabarmati Express killed 59 people in Godhra. Zahira, a survivor, turned hostile in the trial court in Gujarat. But after all 21 accused were acquitted, she moved the apex court claiming she had changed her testimony under threat.

The Supreme Court ordered a retrial in Mumbai, where Zahira’s flip-flops continued. The Mumbai court last month sentenced nine accused to life imprisonment and acquitted eight others because of lack of evidence. The remaining four among the 21 accused had gone into hiding after their acquittal in Gujarat.