The Best Bakery case (also called the 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, Gujarat, India, on 1 March 2002. During the incident, a Hindutvadi mob targeted the Sheikh family who ran the bakery and had taken refuge inside, resulting in the deaths of fourteen people (11 Muslims including family members and 3 Hindu employees of the bakery). This case has come to symbolize the carnage in 2002 Gujarat riots that followed the Godhra train burning. All the 21 accused were acquitted by the court due to shoddy police work and issues with evidence. Background On 1 March 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 riots. As per a televised interview by Zaheera Shaikh, one of the survivors who had witnessed the entire saga, a large mob surrounded the bakery in the evening, around 8 pm. They first stole all the goods that were kept in the bakery including sacks of flour. Thereafter they set fire to the bakery and the people inside, most of them Zaheera's relatives, shouting that no one should escape alive from it. 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. Case in 2003 and acquittal The case was tried at a fast court by the Vadodara sessions court judge Hemantsinh U Mahida. It lasted less than two months (9 May - 27 June 2003). The case hinged on the first hand evidence presented in two FIR (First information reports) that had been presented - that of Raizkhan Amin Mohammed Pathan and of Zaheera Sheikh. In addition, evidence was provided by a large number of witnesses whose evidence was secondary (indirect or hearsay). The day after the attack, Zaheera Sheikh filed the first informant complaint. Sheikh, a 19-year-old during the incident, was a key