Monday, August 29 2005 18:16 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: In a serious dent to Best Bakery case key witness Zahira Sheikh's credibility, a Supreme Court appointed Committee has indicted her as a "self-condemned liar" falling to "inducements" by "certain persons" to give "inconsistent" statements during the trial of the case.

A Bench comprising Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice H K Sema opened the sealed report and read out the three main conclusions of the Committee headed by B M Gupta, the Registrar General of the Supreme Court.

At the same time, the Committee gave a clean chit to social activist Teesta Setalavad of the charges of inducement levelled against her by Zahira. The Court, on January 10 this year, had referred the matter for inquiry on being faced with the "flip flops" of Zahira much to the embarrassment of her one time protectee and social activist Setalavad.

The Bench, after glancing through the over 150-page report, said that the Committee has come to the conclusion that there was inducement given to the Best Bakery case witness by certain persons and that there were inconsistencies in her statements.

The Court made it clear that it has not accepted the report and sought the opinion of the counsel for both Zahira and Setalavad in regard to "acceptability" of the report and posted the matter for further hearing on October 24.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, who is appearing as amicus curiae in Gujarat post-Godhra riot cases, apprehended that the report on being made public would be cited as a document before the trial court at Mumbai and could cause delay in the trial proceedings.

Allaying apprehensions, the Bench said that the Court was yet to accept the report and hence it could not be cited as a document before the trial court. The Court, asking copies of the report be supplied to parties, said that it would hear them on the issue of acceptability of the report.

The Committee, which submitted its report on August 24, dealt in detail various aspects of the controversy surrounding the repeated change of statements on the part of Zahira, the latest one giving clean chit to the accused persons and blaming Setalavad for forcing her to give "doctored statements".

The Committee also examined video footages of a TV channel which described how a BJP politician, accused by a portal in its sting operation of bribing Zahira, when summoned by the Committee for questioning got himself admitted to a hospital.

Gupta had even visited Vadodra to examine the politician as well as to inquire into the status of various accounts held by Zahira, her brother and her relatives.