MUMBAI, April 7 -- Abdul Sattar Suleman Mithaiwala, owner of Suleman Usman Bakery, and the sweetshop of the same name on Mohammed Ali Road, which became synonymous with the 1993 riots, died in the early hours of Monday. He was 79. For years, Sattar Bhai (as he was known) sat in his small office behind the sweetshop, entertaining visitors who dropped in to meet this local celebrity, and offering them special mithais. On regular days, his shop, established in 1936, which remained open from 7 am to 1 am, overflowed with all kinds of nankhatai and aflatoon; during Ramzan, this was one of the go-to places for crowds that flocked to the Minara Masjid area late evenings. But there was another side to this lively place. On January 9, 1993, during the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots, a police raid on the Suleman Usman Bakery (above the shop), left eight unarmed Muslims dead. Eighteen policemen were charged with murder. Prime accused Ram Dev Tyagi, then joint commissioner of police, and nine others were discharged in 2003; the remaining six (two have since died), continue to stand trial. Ironically, the next hearing of this 33-year-old trial is on Tuesday, the day after Sattar Bhai was laid to rest. Sattar Bhai had also testified in this trial, making a dramatic appearance as he was brought into the courtroom on a wheelchair. However, this important prosecution witness's testimony was of no use: he was declared hostile. While he acknowledged that there had been a raid, and that he had collected the bodies of his employees from the morgue, he pleaded loss of memory due to old age about everything else, including the case filed against the policemen. He was 75 at the time. While Sattar bhai was indeed not in the bakery when the raid took place, his statement to the police, read out in court by the public prosecutor, revealed that he was being informed of every detail while it was on. He had received calls from many local residents informing him that his bakery's front door had been broken by the police and they were shooting inside. Later that day, he went there and saw blood on the walls and the floor; gunshot wounds on the bodies of his employees. He also told the police what the survivors of the raid had recounted to him about it. In fact, in 2001, when a Special Task Force was set up to investigate the shootout, Sattar Bhai had handed over a video of the post-raid scene in the bakery to this reporter, requesting that his name not be disclosed. In the long struggle to get R D Tyagi booked, as had been recommended by the B N Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the riots, Sattar Bhai stayed aloof. Perhaps the reason lay in what he once told me: first, the raid led to him and his employees being labelled as "terrorists"; and, later, the cops blamed him for the case filed against them. For a Muslim businessman, the hostility of cops must have proved costly. Yet, Sattar Bhai also acknowledged the injustice done to his employees. Cynical about the outcome of the trial against the accused policemen which started 26 years after the incident, he had asked: "When those in-charge of upholding the law are the accused, when the powers that be do nothing to ensure that justice is done, how can one hope for anything?"...