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 a large mob set fire to their bakery and saw them burn her family members 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 Sheikh family lived in a house directly above the bakery. The mob set the bakery on fire and killings continued from 6 pm to 10 am the next day, a period of sixteen hours. Her statements were recounted for many publications. However, as per documents presented to the court, Zaheera's FIR was registered by the police on 4 March 2002, leading the defence to oppose its use and the judge to suspect its validity and the possibility of it having been doctored by the police to implicate innocent people at the expense of the guilty perpetrators. The defence purported that only the FIR that was registered on FIR of 1 March 2002 (by Raizkhan Amin Mohammed Pathan) should be admissible under Section 60 of the Indian evidence act.