Did Hindu 'rioters' bribe Muslim witness?

NEW DELHI, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- India's Tehelka weekly has screened a video that purports to show Hindus involved in 2002 riots paying $50,000 to buy a key witness - leading to the acquittal of 21 people accused of anti-Muslim carnage.

Tehelka Editor-in-Chief Tarun Tejpal showed the 10-minute video at a news conference in the Indian capital that claimed that Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janta Party lawmaker Madhu Srivastava, a prime suspect charged with masterminding the anti-Muslim riots, had paid $37,500 to Zahira Sheikh, a key witness, to testify in favor of 21 suspects who were later acquitted by a court.

Srivastav's cousin Chandrakant Batthoo was filmed on a spy cam saying that Sheikh had been bought over with money.

Tehelka, which means sensation, is known for its sting journalism. In the past it had broken stories about how Indian cricketers accepted money to throw games and corruption in India's defense deals.

Nineteen-year-old Zahira Sheikh is the main witness in the retrial of 17 men accused of attacking a bakery in the 2002 Gujarat riots. She had told the police how a group of men raided her home in Baroda town and killed 12 people, including her father and a sister.

The case, known as Best bakery case, is one of the most notorious acts of Gujarat riots in 2002 in which more than 1,200 people, mostly Muslims were killed.

Religious violence in Gujarat broke after 58 Hindus, mostly women and children, died after a train they were traveling on was set ablaze. Gujarat's Hindu-party government blamed the riots on a Muslim mob.

To avenge the train attack, Hindu mobs attacked Muslim homes and businesses across Gujarat, and the state government is alleged to have turned a blind eye towards anti-Muslim carnage.

Sheikh turned hostile during court testimony, leading to the acquittal of all 21 Hindus accused in that raid. She later told media that she had backtracked after the accused men threatened her.

An incensed Supreme Court of India ordered a retrial and shifted the case out of Gujarat to Bombay. At least 17 men are being retried, while four others have absconded.

Once again Sheikh turned hostile in Bombay court and refused to name the alleged killers. She claimed that two social workers were offering to bribe her to name the Hindu leaders.

But Tehelka's video has belied Sheikh's claim.

On Thursday, Sheikh told the Bombay court that she doesn't recognize the attackers, saying she had had no clear view of what happened during the attack. Sheikh said she did not know Madhu Srivastava and she had never met him.

Sheikh's testimony is considered vital to the prosecution, and legal experts say her failure to identify the accused will make it difficult to secure convictions.

"We were scared," she said. "From all four sides there were stones and bottles being thrown at us." When asked who was throwing the stones, Zahira Sheikh said that she did not know.

"It was dark, and there was smoke. So how could I see?"

A total of six witnesses, among them Sheikh's mother and two brothers, have now refused to identify those in the dock in Bombay.

Last month, Sheikh's sister-in-law, Yasmin Sheikh, testified that Zahira changed her statement after accepting bribes, the BBC reported. A court is looking into the sources of her funding.

"She (Sheikh) kept changing her stand every six months. We wanted to find the truth behind her dramatic turnarounds," said Tejpal, editor-in-chief of Tehelka.

The Tehelka video shows Sheikh's grandmother Zarina Shahu, an eyewitness to the Best Bakery carnage, recounting the March 1, 2002 night of horror, when a mob attacked and torched the bakery. According to her, the mayhem lasted the whole night.

India is predominantly Hindu -- 82 percent of more than 1 billion people practice the religion. But 13 percent of the population is Muslim, which is the second-largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia.