Suleman Usman Bakery case gets adjourned. Again
Sessions court adjourns hearing in the Suleman Usman Bakery case, last of 1992-1993 Bombay riots cases. Delayed by missing post-mortem reports and witness issues.
The sessions court on Wednesday adjourned the hearing in the ongoing Suleman Usman Bakery case yet again.
This is the last case being heard as part of the larger clutch of cases filed after the 1992-1993 riots in Bombay, as the city was then known. On January 9, 1993, there was a raid on the Suleman Usman Bakery and the adjacent madarsa on Mohammad Ali road. The raid, led by then Mumbai police commission RD Tyagi, left eight employees of the bakery and the madarsa dead.
However, 31 years on, the case is still being heard by the sessions court in Mumbai, punctuated by adjournments. On Monday, the Supreme Court, while hearing a petition about the non-implementation of the BN Srikrishna report, had asked the state government to give details about the case to the Bombay High Court registrar. The Justice Srikrishna report, probing incidents of police firing in the riots, had indicted then police commissioner Ram Dev Tyagi for the raid and subsequent deaths at Suleman Usman Bakery. Justice Srikrishna had described the police as “trigger happy.” The eight Muslims shot dead during the raid were not only unarmed but also had had no criminal record. Proceedings in this case have been at a standstill for over a year. The last witness to depose in court—on December 7, 2022-- was the doctor who had prepared the post-mortem reports of the eight victims.
The original post-mortem reports had been destroyed on orders of the police since this was seen as an old case, ignoring the fact that the charge sheet in the case was filed as late as 2001.
In the absence of the original PM reports, the public prosecutor, at the last hearing, showed the doctor the post-mortem reports that were part of the court record. The judge objected to this, and in February 2023, passed an order saying that this procedure could not be followed. The PP subsequently appealed against his order in the High Court. No hearing has been conducted since, though there was no stay on the proceedings.
Both, the judge and the PP, hearing the Suleman Usman Bakery case have since been transferred and the case has been assigned to a new judge and a new PP.
The Pydhonie police who have been asked to trace witnesses in the 31-year-old case have an uphill task. In March this year, a witness came all the way from Mumbra during Ramazan, but was sent back without being examined. On Wednesday too
another witness, also from Mumbra, came to depose in court despite a death in his family, but went back without doing so as the hearing was adjourned.
The matter was adjourned because the Bombay High Court order into the earlier PP’s appeal on post-mortem reports has not yet been uploaded.
Eighteen policemen, including commissioner Tyagi, were charge sheeted for murder. But ten of them were discharged in 2003. The remaining 8 policemen were deemed fit to stand trial for murder. Of these eight, two have died since.