VADODARA, Mar 25 (UNI): More than three years after the Best bakery carnage, prime witness Zaheera Sheikh's elder brother Nafitullah has taken up the bakery's renovation to restart the family businessagain.
"We have started the renovation work with our limited resources.
We will restart the Best Bakery again provided we get some financial support," Kailasben Vasava alias Heena, the second wife of Nafitullah, told UNI today.
Asked about the whereabouts of Yasmin Bano, the estranged wife of Nafitullah, who was first to take up repair of the two-storeyed building in September, 2003, and was living with her four-year-old daughter Tanveer till November last year despite strong opposition of her in-laws, Heena said Nafitullah had already snapped all relations with Yasmin after the carnage.
Heena, a Hindu girl who had converted to Islam after her marriage and has a three-year-old son from Nafitullah, also ruled out the possibility of Zaheera joining the Bakery.
Soon after turning hostile during trial before the fast-track here in May, 2003, barring Yasmin, the entire Sheikh family, including Zaheera, had migrated to Mumbai.
Yasmin, who is now fighting a legal battle against her in-laws for her right over the Best bakery property, had locked the bakery before she left for Mumbai on November two last year in order to depose in the retrial in the case there.
During her deposition, Yasmin had identified 11 accused in the Mazgaon court contrary to her earlier statement that all the 21 accused were innocent, while Zaheera and other members of her family retracted their statements and did not identify any one of them.
Heena said she and her husband had decided to restart their traditional bakery business again.
"We have put in all our available funds in the repair work which is nearing completion," she said.
Following the Supreme court order, eight-member armed para-military force personnel are still camping near the bakery site.
After Yasmin made her forceful entry into the bakery and started selling firewood there to earn her livelyhood, Zaheera's mother Sehrunissa filed a petition in the civil court here in December, 2003, alleging that the estranged wife of her son was not entitled to the Best bakery property owned by her husband, the late Habibullah Sheikh.
Nafitullah too blamed Yasmin for the untimely death of his father.
In his deposition in the Mumbai court, Nafitullah had rejected his estranged wife's claim that she was present when their bakery was attacked and set on fire by a Hindu mob in which 14 people were burnt alive.
The homeless Sheikh family was provided a two-room house by by the Anjuman-E-Imdade Bahami Relief Committee at Ekta Nagar, but the family sold it off to another riot victim for Rs 55,000 last year having migrated to Mumbai fearing threat to their lives in Vadodara.
Zaheera and her family members, however, finally returned to Vadodara on November three last year to file an affidavit before District Collector Bhagyesh Jha against social activist Teesta Setalvad.
Since then the family has been shifting from one house to another in Gujarat in search of a secured place.
