Best Bakery case: 4 convicts shifted to Vadodara jail

Four convicts of the Best Bakery case have been shifted to the central jail in the city in Vadodra, official sources said on Monday.

Sanjay Thakkar, Bahadursingh Chauhan, Sanabhai Baria and Dinesh Rajbhar were shifted on Sunday from Kolhapur jail, they said.

Their life sentences, awarded by a trial court in Mumbai, were upheld by the Bombay high court, based on the statements of four witnesses. In the aftermath of the riots triggered by the burning of the Sabarmati Express in Godhra on February 27, 2002, 14 members of a family were killed in a mob attack on the bakery in Vadodara on March 1.

The high court had acquitted five others – Rajubhai Baria, Pankaj Gosavi, Jagdish Rajput, Suresh alias Lalo Devjibhai Vasava and Shailesh Tadvi -- observing that there was no evidence or witness statement confirming the roles allegedly played by these accused.

After the Supreme Court order, the Best Bakery case was moved out of Gujarat to a special court in Mumbai which was the first riot-related case of Gujarat.

The nine convicts had challenged the judgement of the trial court in the Bombay high court. The trial court had earlier acquitted eight others accused in the case and issued perjury notices to key witness Zaheera Sheikh and other witnesses for back-tracking from their testimonies.

In 2006, Sheikh, her mother Sehrunisa and sister Saherabano were convicted for perjury. The four accused in the Best Bakery case, whose life sentences were upheld by the Bombay high court in July, were allowed to be shifted to a prison in Gujarat.