Mumbai: Sailun Khan, the seventh eyewitness in the Best bakery case, today (Nov 29, 2004) identified 15 accused in the trial court in Mumbai, saying they had attacked the bakery on March 1, 2002 in which 14 persons were killed and some others injured.

Deposing before designated judge Abhay Thipsay, Sailun, a bakery worker, recognised three accused by names and the rest by faces. All the accused were asked to stand up in the dock and he pointed at 15 of them.

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The three accused, identified by names, were Dinesh Rajbhar, Sanjay Thakker and Lala.

The witness told the court that on that day Rajbhar and Sanjay were holding swords and had attacked him on the head as a result of which he suffered injuries. He also said that they had snatched purse of his brother, Shazad Khan, also a bakery worker.

Sailun also named accused Jeetu Chauhan but could not recognise him when the accused stood up in the dock during identification parade. The cross-examination of the witness, however, revealed that the 15 accused, identified by him today, did not figure in the earlier police statement of Sailun.

Besides, in his police statement, Sailun had talked about three other accused who are not before the court today and he also did not refer to them during examination-in-chief conducted by prosecutor Manjula Rao.

Sailun is the fifth eyewitness who has identified some accused and supported the prosecution. Two others, Nafitullah Shaikh and Nasibullah Shaikh, brothers of prime witness Zaheera Shaikh, have turned hostile.

In a related development, lawyer Firize Ansari filed an application in the court seeking contempt action against Zaheera for making statements in a section of the press while the trial was in progress in the court.

He also demanded a CBI probe into Zaheera's conduct of staging a turnaround by going back on her version.