Best Bakery

The Best Bakery case (also called Tulsi Bakery case) was a legal case involving the burning down of the Best Bakery, a small outlet in the Hanuman Tekri area in Vadodara, India, on March 1, 2002. During the incident, a mob targeted the Sheikh family who ran the bakery and had taken refuge inside, resulting in the deaths of 14 (11 Muslims including family members and 3 Hindu employees of the bakery). This case has come to symbolize the carnage in 2002 Gujarat violence (and the alleged State Government complicity in it) that followed the Godhra train Massacre.

On March 1, 2002, communal frenzy enveloped Vadodara. The Best Bakery, a small outlet in the Hanuman Tekri area of Vadodara, was attacked by a mob, which burned down the bakery, killing 14 people. This attack was part of the 2002 Gujarat violence.

Amnesty International reports that in many cases of the Gujarat violence, police recorded complaints in a defective manner, failed to collect witnesses' statements as well as corroborative evidence and did not investigate the responsibility of eminent suspects. The Best Bakery case was seen by human rights organizations in India as a test case given that what Amnesty calls "strong evidence" against the accused existed, but the victims gained little justice.

The day after the attack, Zaheera Sheikh filed the first informant complaint. Sheikh, a 19-year-old during the incident, was a key and notable witness. She stated that she saw her family members burn to death. When the mob gathered, shouting communal slogans, her family fled to the terrace and some locked themselves in a first-floor room. The mob set the bakery on fire and killings continued from 6 pm to 10 am the next day. Her statements were recounted for many publications.

On 23 March 2003, however, 37 of the 73 witnesses, including Sheikh, turned hostile as they had received threats to their lives, including from Madhu Srivastava, a BJP MLA.

All of the 21 accused were acquitted on June 27, 2003 by additional sessions judge H U Mahida of the Vadodara fast track court. Other witnesses had suffered head injuries and were not in a mental state to give an accurate witness account. The state government pointed to the lapses by the police in "registering and recording of FIR" (First Information Report) and on the part of the prosecution in "recording of evidence" of witnesses in the Best Bakery case.

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