Suleman Usman Bakery trial at a standstill for a year

The trial of six policemen who raided the Mohammed Ali Road bakery on January 9, 1993, has not moved an inch since the last one year

Mumbai: Exactly 31 years after eight unarmed Muslims with no criminal record were shot dead inside the Suleman Usman Bakery and the madarsa adjoining it, the policemen charged with their murder are still facing trial. In fact, the trial of six policemen who raided the Mohammed Ali Road bakery on January 9, 1993, has not moved an inch since the last one year.

Suleman usman Bakery. HT photo by Hemant Padalkar. 06.02.08

The trial began in 2019 in the sessions court. But though the Pydhonie police have managed to trace witnesses to that raid after all these years, the last witness to depose was on December 7, 2022.

On that day, an “expert witness” was in the witness box: the doctor who had prepared the post mortem reports of the victims. The original reports prepared by him had been destroyed in 2005 on orders of the then police commissioner, even though the charge sheet had been filed in 2001 and the trial was yet to start. In the absence of the originals, the public prosecutor was showing the doctor the post-mortem reports which 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 appeal against this order is pending in the high court. But even though the high court has not stayed the trial, it remains at a standstill pending the appeal.

This is just one more twist in a case which took 18 years after the charge sheet was filed to come to trial. The Suleman Usman Bakery raid was one of the defining incidents of the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots in Mumbai which killed 900. The prime accused in the case, filed after the Supreme Court prodded the Maharashtra government, was then joint commissioner of police Ram Dev Tyagi, who later became police commissioner of Mumbai.

Despite the gravity of this case, no special PP was appointed. The case has gone from court to court, and been heard by different judges.

Meanwhile, one more accused died last year, leaving only six policemen to face trial. Of the 18 policemen charge sheeted, 10, including Tyagi, were discharged in 2003. The rest were deemed fit to stand trial for murder.

The Justice B N Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the riots described this incident as one where the police story “did not inspire credence”, and in which the police “appeared to be utterly trigger-happy”.