A group of Muslim intellectuals on Wednesday defended human rights activist Teesta Setalvad's role in the Best Bakery case and demanded a high-level probe into the circumstances that made key witness Zaheera Sheikh retract her statement.

• Best Bakery trail: Zaheera recants | Zaheera's volte-face: Setalvad moves SC

The Intellectuals' Forum for Secular Democracy, comprising mostly academics from the Aligarh Muslim University, in a statement urged all "right-thinking citizens" to rally behind Setalvad and "expose the designs of those who have contempt for the rule of law and are now celebrating the sudden shift in the stand of Zaheera Sheikh."

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