[GOTFIVEONIT]

Best Bakery: Worst riot case forgotten for good: IBNLive.com > Videos



TAINT WEARS OFF: BJP's Madhu Srivastava was one of the accused in the Best Bakery case. But he got away scott free.

Best Bakery: Worst riot case forgotten for good

Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Baroda, Gujarat, December 04: Two years after he got off scott free by the Supreme Court in the Best Bakery case, three-time MLA from Vaghodia in Baroda, Madhu Srivastava is preparing for a fourth term.

Best Bakery was where 14 Muslims were burnt alive during the 2002 riots. In the elections held that year, Srivastava was one of the candidates who kept harping on communal violence as his election campaign theme.

But this time, like most BJP candidates in riot-affected central Gujarat, he is staying away from reviving the scars of 2002 and is instead focussing on local issues in Baroda and the development claims of the Modi government.

“BJP in its six-year rule has given power to 18,000 villages and Narmada water has been taken to Saurashtra, Kutch and Bhuj,” he says.

Vadodara is better known by the landmark it finds hard to live down. Best Bakery is one of them But interestingly, neither the BJP nor the Congress is talking about the incident or riots in its runup to the elections.

The Best Bakery case was based on the statement of Zahira Sheikh, daughter of the bakery owner Habibullah Sheikh. But during the course of the hearings, Zahira and other witnesses retracted their statements, allegedly under threats from Srivastava.

While his role in the 2002 violence remains controversial, even his Congress opponent Jayesh Patel seems unwilling to rake up the issue. “My main point in the elections is that I am an educated candidate,” he says.

The nature of the election campaign in the communally polarised bylanes of Baroda only confirms a trend this time: engaged in an intense competition for the dominant Hindu vote, both the BJP and the Congress seem keen not to harp on 2002.


Best Bakery and its victims have little place in the politics of Gujarat.

[exMember]

salaam

BJP in India is one of the few political parties with a so-obvious agenda against Muslims, an agenda filled with malice and repugnance towards Muslims, yet foreign nations aiming on "spreading democracy and human rights" across all borders dont seem to pay any attention to this dangerous group.

The fall of Babri Masjid, the unbelievable riots of Gujurat, the recent bombings in Hyderabad, and so many other events arent enough to invite open condemnation of the BJP.

May Allah (swt) help all the Muslims.