MUMBAI, June 18 -- Thirty-three years after he was assaulted by the police, Qutbuddin Shaikh, then a 17-year-old madrasa student, on Wednesday told a sessions court how he was beaten till he lost consciousness. Shaikh was testifying in the murder trial of policemen involved in the raid on the Mohammed Ali road-located Suleman Usman Bakery and its adjacent madrasa during the second phase of the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, which left eight unarmed Muslims dead. Now 50, and an imam in a Santacruz masjid, Shaikh also testified that he saw his teacher Maulana Abdul Kasim being beaten by the police. "He was handicapped, hence he could not run away," he said. Shaikh told the court that he and 10 to 12 other students had finished lunch and were in their room. The gates of the masjid were locked from inside, and they had been instructed not to go out. Sometime after 12 pm, he heard noises from below, and sounds of a door being broken. He heard the police come up firing. When they entered the students' room, Shaikh, who was seated just opposite the door, said that they began beating everyone. "They hit me with rifle butts on both temples and on the back of my head," he said, showing the court where he had been hit. "They also kicked me with their boots and hit me with lathis." Later, Shaikh came to know that his teacher had been shot thrice and died. Asked if he wanted to add anything more about the incident, Shaikh replied that that was all he wanted to say. APP Sachin Patil then requested the court's permission to ask the witness leading questions. The judge granted the request, at the same time refusing the defence's plea to declare Shaikh a hostile witness. At the very start of his testimony, Shaikh got the date of the January 9, 1993 incident wrong, recalling it as having taken place on January 11. When the PP pointed this out to him, Shaikh replied, "My memory has not been good after I was beaten on the back of my head." The proceedings took an unusual turn during the latter part of Shaikh's testimony when the witness told the judge that he wanted to ask a question. "When the door was locked from inside, why did the police forcibly enter?" he said. "It's not as if we attacked them." Additional sessions judge S B Dige told him he had had his say, and now he only had to answer the APP's questions. Shaikh will be cross-examined on July 1....