“Mob Attack in Godhra, 12 Arrested

Wednesday, March 13, 2002 (Godhra): Within a fortnight of the February 27 railway station mayhem and subsequent violent fallout, tension escalated again today with a minority mob allegedly attacking people in the town, leading to police firing. Police said a ‘500-people strong mob of minority community’ attacked people in the Jahurpura area near the Old Bus Stand. They resorted to stone pelting and also ‘opened fire’ with private arms, police said. Police opened fire and hurled tear gas shells to disperse the mob. There was no report of any injury or casualty so far.

Additional forces of police, State Reserve Police and anti-riot Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel led by senior DSP, Raju Bhargava, rushed to the spot and carried out a combing operation. ‘Twelve persons including two women were picked up from a nearby place of worship,’ police said. The situation was under control but tense, police said”.

“Is the Godhra report only a political stunt being pulled by Laloo Prasad Yadav? Will the real facts about Godhra never be known because it is such a political hot potato? The truth perhaps is not as obscured by circumstances or motives. Laloo may well have done a disservice to the credibility of the U.C. Banerjee Committee report by blatantly extracting political mileage from it. Yet, senior police officials from Gujarat and technical experts Outlookspoke to believe that to date the Banerjee report offers the most coherent explanation of the Godhra tragedy, if not the complete picture.

So, even as political clouds gather around the report, it has somewhat lifted the fog of smoke that engulfed coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express, claiming 59 lives, and sparking off the most horrific communal violence in independent India.

Justice Banerjee himself made two trips to Godhra and examined the report of the Gujarat state forensic science laboratory. And throughout his three-month probe, he was assisted by S.K. Dheri, a retired chief fire officer of the Delhi Fire Services. Sources in Rail Bhawan say Banerjee even experimented with an old abandoned railway bogie in Calcutta. It was set afire to draw conclusions from the burn patterns. He also drew on the expertise of Calcutta forensic experts.

Even more significant is the information an independent group of IIT engineers and multi-disciplinary experts from the Hazards Centre, New Delhi, submitted to him. One of the most imaginative steps they took was to locate another coach—16526 gscn—known to have caught fire from the inside while under maintenance at the Jagadhri yard in Delhi. The burn marks were highly similar to those on S-6.

The findings of both the judge and the experts ruled out a planned conspiracy to set the coach on fire. “It is unbelievable that 150 kar sevaks armed with trishuls would allow themselves to be burnt without a murmur,” the judge states. “The inflammable liquid theory also gets negated by passengers who suffered burns on the upper parts but not the lower parts of the body,” the report notes.

The reason is this: any inflammable liquid thrown from the outside could not have produced the kind of marks found on the top of S-6. Since the only inflammable material inside the coach were the ply and foam berths, the experts say, the fire may have started under a seat. Eyewitness accounts and other evidence indicate this might have been so. There are accounts of cooking in the carriage.If clothes or mattresses under a seat caught fire, it would smoulder for some minutes before leaping out in flames. On the other hand, in the case of an inflammable liquid, the smoke would be noticed immediately.

In the Godhra coach, therefore, the independent experts conclude, “It is possible the fire originated in the…lower berths. The resultant dense and high-temperature smoke spread to the top of the carriage and moved along the ceiling, and between the ceiling and the roof, throughout the length of the coach. The radiative and convective heat generated eventually resulted in a flashover when the fire engulfed the entire coach towards the top.”

Before that, the burning foam and rexine would have released cyanide, carbon monoxide and dense smoke, causing passengers to faint. They would later burn to death. Only those near the exits would escape with minor burn injuries.

These findings are clearly not palatable to the BJP. The Godhra incident, with all its anti-Muslim resonance, had been the central plank of the party’s successful 2002 assembly poll campaign in Gujarat. Which is why the party dismisses the Banerjee report as mere “secularist propaganda” and insists that the Nanavati Commission appointed by the Gujarat government will present the “real truth” about Godhra and the subsequent riots.

Yet, as Outlookhas learnt, several testimonies and evidence presented before the Nanavati Commission also contradicted the Muslim conspiracy theory. And neither Laloo nor Banerjee could have influenced such accounts. For instance, DSP K.C. Bawa, who investigated the Godhra incident in the first crucial months, in his deposition before Justice Nanavati said he found no evidence of a conspiracy to burn the train nor any involvement of outside or foreign agencies. Then, no passenger, including the kar sevaks, said they saw anyone boarding the train and throwing inflammable material on the floor or setting the coach on fire. In fact, the Gujarat government’s own forensic science laboratory had found no trace of petroleum hydrocarbons in the debris, which report is also with the Nanavati Commission.

Moreover, the experts who probed Godhra, also say the post-mortem reports were a “charade”, made in 20 minutes. More outrageously, of the 27 post-mortem reports they studied, only five bodies were identified. So, if the majority of the victims are listed as “unknown”, how did the Modi government conclude the dead were exclusively kar sevaks?

While the BJP continues to squirm on the Godhra issue, the report’s release has come as a bit of a breather for Muslims across the country.The overwhelming sentiment is that a huge taint has been removed. But in the light of the assembly polls in Bihar, the more pertinent question is, will the report do for what the incident did for Modi in Gujarat?

…Given the EC’s strictures, Laloo will no longer wave copies of the interim report. But that won’t stop him from making tangential references to “having exposed the conspiracy to defame Muslims”…”

“…Gayatri Panchal, a resident of Ahmedabad, who survived the incident on February 27, 2002, but lost both her parents in her reaction to the report has said, “The report of the Banerjee Commission is absolutely wrong. I have seen everything with my own eyes and barely escaped myself but lost both my parents.”

Panchal, who has three sisters, said the Banerjee Commission report was not correct as the fire could not have been accidental as no one was cooking in the S-6 coach and it was packed with passengers.“Mobs pelted stones at the coach for long and then threw in burning rags and also poured some inflammable material so that the coach was on fire.I will maintain the same whereever I am called to depose on the matter,” Panchal said.”

“Molten Mindsets

The verdict in the Sabarmati Express fire at Godhra on February 27, 02, was delivered after nine years on February 22

Of the accused, 63 acquitted, 31 convicted

Alleged mastermind Maulana Umarji is acquitted

State government claims the verdict proved that the riots were triggered by a conspiracy hatched by Muslims in Godhra

Many believe that members of the minority community were picked up and targeted in order to justify the post-Godhra riots

***

…Godhra was a decisive political event in the BJP’s history. The party had just lost power in its base in Uttar Pradesh in 2002 and was expected to lose the Gujarat elections later that year, when the Godhra incident happened. Indeed, the kar sevaks were travelling from Ayodhya via Godhra the day after the BJP was defeated in the UP assembly. Then coach S-6 blazed, 59 passengers died, many of them members of the VHP. The ensuing riots saw a massacre of Muslims, in the polarised communal situation Narendra Modi emerged as a Hindu strongman, and ever since the BJP under him has remained undefeated in the state…

…Similarly, in Gujarat Narendra Modi is in a very different position than he was in 2002. Then he had been sent to the state as a replacement for Keshubhai Patel against whom anti-incumbency had built up. He had been in power for just a few months when the train caught fire…

…Which is why the judgement delivered by the special court is politically expedient for Modi. On the one hand, the court has bought the theory of the train inferno being the result of a criminal conspiracy—a fig leaf he needs to try and cover the taint of the riots. On the other, the court has also let off some of the accused to keep up a semblance of justice being delivered in a state from where the Supreme Court shifted out many of the riot-related cases.

Yet there is no missing the fact that the so-called justice delivered in this case is as curious as the original incident of the burning of coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002. There was no logic behind a judgement that freed 63 of the chargesheeted but found 31 guilty of murder and criminal conspiracy although the so-called “mastermind” was let off. Gagan Sethi of the Ahmedabad-based Centre for Social Justice says “it’s crazy and cruel that people were kept in jail for nine years when even if they had been convicted for the skirmish at the Godhra station they would have spent less time inside”.

Social activist Hanif Lakdawala says, “I am very puzzled about this whole thing because the so-called main conspirator has been acquitted but still the conspiracy apparently hatched at his behest has been upheld. This means the police has done a very shoddy investigation…people were picked up randomly, sent to jail and also never granted bail. Who will compensate for those nine years in jail?”

There’s no logic behind a judgement that freed 63 of the accused, fixed 31 for murder and let off the ‘mastermind’.

Maulana Umarji was a businessman who had done a lot of relief work for the Muslim community after the riots. He had even made a presentation to then PM A.B. Vajpayee during his post-riots visit to Godhra, and had also spoken before some inquiry committees. Then suddenly Umarji was picked up and named as the mastermind who incited people to set the coach on fire in order to unleash a communal frenzy. In the police version of events, it seemed the man who was working for peace was actually behind the troubles. Now nine years later, he has been been let off, although others have not been so fortunate.

Several questions remain about the entire process, including about the witnesses on whose testimony a conspiracy has been proven. Then there is the basic question—why would the Muslims of Godhra plan such a horrific incident in a BJP-ruled state? After all, the incident became the trigger for the worst anti-Muslim violence in independent India as mobs seeking revenge rampaged through their neighbourhoods during three days of bloodshed.  It was the BJP, VHP and Modi who benefited from the gore.

Today, the BJP may be muted but the VHP is not. Praveen Togadia issued a statement: “Now that the honourable court has accepted the brutal criminal conspiracy that 59 Hindus were burnt alive by the jehadis, all conspirators must get the same punishment…a death penalty and nothing less than that.” At the time of writing, the sentence had not been pronounced though the prosecution is likely to seek death sentence for key convicts. The trial court has identified five accused who poured petrol on the bogey to set it on fire. They are: Aiyub Patalia, Mehbub Popa, Sadiq Vohra, Irfan Qalander and Saukat Patalia. Besides these five, Razaq Kurkur, owner of Aman guesthouse where the conspiracy was apparently hatched, has also been convicted.

The Gujarat government is naturally trying to showcase the judgement as an example of the exemplary justice meted out in the state (no matter that the state has been slammed by the SC and rights organisations). According to its spokesperson, Jaynarayan Vyas, “the verdict is a major setback to those elements out to defame Gujarat, its police, judiciary and people”. Actually, the trial only began after the SC asked the Gujarat HC to set up special fast-track courts to conduct trials in the nine most sensitive cases linked to ’02. The legal labyrinth has been a complex one till date, it’s a pity no one’s counted the human cost in all this.

By Saba Naqvi with bureau reports from Ahmedabad”