The judge, the prosecutor and Best Bakery

In one of the most gruesome incidents of the post-Godhra carnage in Gujarat, 14 people were burnt to death on 1 March 2002, in a bakery in Baroda city, two hours drive from Ahmedabad. Two separate First Information Reports (FIRs) were lodged with the city police, one on the day of the incident by one Raizkhan Amin Mohammed Pathan and another on 4 March by Zahira Sheikh. Amidst much controversy and allegations of bias and abuse of authority, the police collected evidence for the trial, which was conducted at the Baroda Fast Track Court No 1, set up to deal with riot-related cases. On 27 June 2003, after 44 days of trial, the Baroda court acquitted all the 21 accused. It took 15 months for the Fast Track Court to deny justice to the victims. The court, incidentally, was set up with the active support of the Union Law Minister, Arun Jaitley, who is also a Member of Parliament representing Gujarat. While letting the accused go scot-free, additional magistrate and presiding judge, Justice HU Mahida, was kind enough to observe, "The Best Bakery massacre is a blot on the cultural city of Baroda".

This trial will be remembered for long, and not just because of Justice Mahida's incisive and diverting analysis of issues altogether irrelevant to the case at hand, nor even because all the accused were set free. There are many other reasons why it will go down in history, and none of them offers any reassurance about the conduct of the Indian police and the judiciary. Among the scandalous aspects of the trial were that the witnesses for the prosecution were subjected to intimidation and that the police was negligent in its investigation. Amazingly, the Public Prosecutor (PP) Raghuvir Pandya, who led the case, had fought an election on a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ticket.