Probe if Teesta tutored witnesses in 2002 Best Bakery case: Accused to Gujarat police

Mumbai: A man facing trial in the 2002 Best Bakery case asked a Mumbai court on Wednesday to transfer the case because the trial court had allegedly not taken cognisance of his apprehension that witnesses were being tutored

Mumbai: A man facing trial in the 2002 Best Bakery case asked a Mumbai court on Wednesday to transfer the case because the trial court had allegedly not taken cognisance of his apprehension that witnesses were being tutored. He also asked Gujarat Police to probe if activist Teesta Setalvad played any role in tutoring the witnesses.

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Harshad Solanki filed a plea in the Mumbai sessions court. “I have moved a plea to transfer the case as the court passed the order for further examination of the witnesses and issued summons to witnesses for identification of the accused in my absence and without hearing me,” his lawyer Prakash Salsingekar said.

Solanki is being prosecuted along with Mafat Gohil for allegedly being part of a mob that had attacked Best Bakery at Hanuman Tekri, Vadodara, on March 1, 2002, and killed 14 people.

The developments came on a day a special investigation team told a Gujarat court that Setalvad was part of a larger conspiracy to frame the then CM Narendra Modi and others as accused in the post-Godhra riots cases, and attempted to destabilise the BJP government.

Setalvad was arrested last month by the Ahmedabad crime branch along with former DGP RB Sreekumar and ex-IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt for allegedly fabricating evidence to frame innocent persons in the 2002 riots cases. The Mumbai-based activist, currently in jail in Gujarat, has sought bail.

Last month, the Supreme Court dismissed a plea filed by Zakia Jafri, whose husband Ehsan Jafri, a former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, killed during the riots in Ahmedabad.