Thursday, March 09, 2006

Zaheera Shaikh

Having previously written about the seriousness of Zaheera Shaikh's perjury in the Best Bakery case, we welcome the latest judicial developments in this case.

Best Bakery judgment: 8 acquitted, 9 convicted

Best Bakery Case: Zaheera Shaikh Gets One Year Jail for Perjury

3 comments:

Primary Red said...

It's entirely sensible to have sympathy with her -- but she took money to shield the killers of her own family? That's peculiar, don't you think?

Best regards

Anonymous said...

The problem is notthat she got punished - it was an open, and shut case, with her flip-flops, but that none of the people who induced her to switch stands were even investigated.
At best a cursory chat.
That, is the thing that's wrong with the verdict - that it refused to see beyond Zaheera.

Anonymous said...

She "swicthed" sides in late 2004, when the trial in Mumbai was already at an advanced stage. She could not have been unaware of the consequences of that decision. Soon after, she had a fatwa declared against her excommunicating her from the quam -- which fatwa went unprtotested by the alleged human rights activists defending her.How easy is it to tempt a Muslim in India with lure of lucre to to become "traitor" to his or her own community?

Use brains folks. Who tried to buy her over really?

It was a bench headed by VN Khare that transferred the case to Bombay HC. He took the case on without verifying whether Zahira hersefl filed an affidavit before the court -- it turns out that she did not. The human rights activist prodcued an affidavit much later, after Zahira swicthed sides, claiming that she forgot to file it earlier.

Before retiring, Kahre also named the bench that was to hear Guj cases; a prerogative normally of the new CJI. And Khare was also Indira Gandhi's lawyer in the infamous case that led to imposition of Emergecny:

http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/may/10swadas.htm


Also, one of the learned judges who sentenced Zahira is also one of those judges who delivered the "minority" judgement in the Bihar Assembly Dissolution case. What a coincidence, eh. His argument was simple: the governor's decision was not to be contested, even if his conduct is suspicious! Another interesting argument was also advanced: that the governor did not prevent any party from staking a claim to form the government! If ever there is a case of putting the cart before the horse, this is, becuase Buta Singh's whole gameplan was to prevent Nitish Kumar from staking a claim!!

I learn that Arun Shourie is writing a book on supreme court judgements, analyzing some important ones. I hope he'll analyze the Best Bakery case too.

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