[IndyMedia Bombay] Mohan Guraswamy on Godhra

[PUKAR @ IndyMedia]

Who lit the fire?

With the outing of the report of the Forensic Science Laboratory 
(FSL), Ahmedabad, the question of who lit the fire in coach S-6 of 
the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27 has now assumed 
critical
importance. This incident was the immediate cause of the firestorms 
that engulfed Gujarat and that frenzy
now is the bedrock of the supposed BJP resurgence and its aggressive 
espousal of a virulent Hindutva. The
report of MS Dahiya, Assistant Director of the FSL, which is now part 
of the charge sheet completely debunks the theories about the coach 
being set afire by an angry mob, which had mysteriously collected 
outside the Godhra railway station. The report emphatically concludes 
that the coach was set afire by someone =ECstanding in the passage of 
the compartment near seat number 72, using a container with a wide 
opening about 60 liters of inflammable liquid has been poured and 
then a fire has been started in the bogie.=EE

The FSL has also conclusively demonstrated by experiments that it was 
virtually impossible to throw inflammable liquids into the train 
through the open windows that are at a height of seven feet. The 
report also shows that there was a three feet high mound running 
parallel to the track at a distance of 14 feet and if the fire 
bombers were standing on this mound and sloshing the fuel at the 
compartment only about 10-15% of the fuel would have got inside. 
Since the rest of the fuel would then have fallen outside there
would have been burn damage on and near the track. This was not so. 
=46ile photographs of the burning coach very clearly show the flames 
raging from within and without even the external paintwork being 
touched. The pictures also show rescuers trying to hose down the 
flames standing right alongside the burning coach. Very obviously the 
coach was set afire from within and whosoever claims that it was set 
afire by the collected mob is lying through their teeth. And that 
might very well include the Deputy Prime Minister of India.

The train was chock-a-block full of kar sevaks and whosoever was 
carrying =ECa container with a wide
opening holding about 60 liters of inflammable liquid=EE should have 
been able to mingle freely with the
inflamed kar sevaks. If this whosoever it was, was carrying such a 
container with a wide opening quite
openly he, she or they would have been known to the other passengers 
to be able to do so without arousing apprehensions. Remember the 
country was in a state of heightened military alert after the 
December 13 attack on the Parliament and it would just not be 
possible for a stranger to walk into a crowded coach of true 
believers with a large container with liquid sloshing about. The 
train was almost a Rambhakt special and each compartment was 
concentrated with people from a particular area or belonging to a 
particular group within the Sangh Parivar, all of who would have been 
known to each other. It is therefore extremely implausible that a 
perfect stranger or strangers would have been able to splash the 
petrol and set it alight and then escape. The killer/killers would 
have had to been in the adjoining compartment or be able to alight 
quickly from the burning compartment without arousing suspicion. 
Consequently the theory that it was an ISI cell that carried out the 
carnage becomes extremely
difficult to sustain.

The exact identification of the inflammable liquid, including the 
brand of the petrol, would be very
easily obtained by spectroscopic examination, that is, if the police 
had collected samples of the charred
material. If the quality of preliminary investigations was through 
even the exact type and material of the
burned container, if it was left behind, could have been obtained, 
providing a vital step towards
identifying the murderers. But that would be possibly asking too much 
of the Indian Police Service? However in such a high profile case, 
one would have thought that the highest standards of professionalism 
would have been strived for, especially when there were two Sardars 
in the picture. Then in all probability this is exactly what the 
persons behind the outrage would not have wanted?

It would now seem that the harassment and intimidation of the mostly 
Muslim hawkers at Godhra railway station was deliberate and aimed at 
provoking an agitated response. If this was so, the torching of coach 
S-6 could have been intended to provoke a furious backlash. This 
seems like a classic agent provocateur
operation that went out of hand.

The use of an agent provocateur to create a crisis is not at all 
uncommon. We see much of it all around.
Sometime it is a pig=EDs head that is thrown in a mosque, another time 
it is a cow=EDs head that is thrown
into a temple. Cadre based political parties for who the end 
justifies all means are especially adept at
this. Joseph Stalin, who was a small time thug working on the fringe 
of the underground Communist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia, 
caught the eye of his mentors by his ability to precipitate crises to
mobilize the masses. I recall watching the live telecast on a local 
channel of a demonstration in Hyderabad against the increase in power 
tariffs and was struck by the extremely deliberate provocations of a 
very small group that changed a peaceful gathering into a furious mob 
causing the police to open fire at it. The demolition of the Babri 
Masjid was very clearly perpetrated by just a handful of persons who 
came  repared to do the job. The gathered crowd just joined with 
Sadhvi Rithambara exhorting from the dais =ECek aur dhakha.=EE The record 
shows that while Uma Bharati and Murli Manohar Joshi were hugging 
each other in ecstatic joy, LK Advani looked on helplessly.

Its not only cadre based political parties that do this. Countries 
with active intelligence services routinely do this. Intelligence 
agencies like the American CIA, British SIS, French SDECE, Israeli 
Mossad, Russian FSB, Chinese GRI, Pakistani ISI and even the Indian 
RAW carry out such operations quite routinely. Even now Pakistan 
insists that the January 30, 1971 hijacking of =ECGanga=EE, an Indian 
Airlines Fokker Friendship aircraft, to Lahore by Hashim and Ashraf 
Qureshi was an Indian intelligence operation meant to precipitate the 
termination of over flights to Dhaka making the link between the two 
Pakistani halves even more tenuous. The two Qureshi=EDs were sentenced 
by a Pakistani court to 19 years but were exonerated by the Pakistan 
Supreme Court in 1984.

In 1991 a unit of the Peoples War Group attacked the Kakatiya Fast 
Passenger train at Charlapalli near
Hyderabad killing 47 passengers in the blaze set off by them. It took 
only a small quantity of incendiary
material to set off the blaze. One of the attackers was apprehended. 
Later the PWG issued a statement that the death of 47 passengers was 
inadvertent and expressed regret for it.

In another incident at 4.30 am on March 8, 1993 in AP=EDs Guntur 
district two dalit youths Satuluri
Chalapathi Rao (24) and Gantela Vijayvardhana Rao (22) inspired by 
the plot a popular Telugu movie held up an APRTC express bus from 
Hyderabad to Chilkaluripet under the threat of torching it. They 
wanted money to start a business. Things didn=EDt happen as they did in 
the movie. The passengers panicked and in the ensuing melee the can 
of petrol dropped in the bus, which in turn had a leaky fuel tank and 
resulted in an explosive fire. 22 passengers including two children 
were killed. In both cases while there was intent to
commit a crime, what resulted was not intended. In the case of the 
two youths the intention was not even to set fire to the bus, but it 
happened and 22 sleeping passengers were burnt to death. The Supreme 
Court sentenced them to death in 1995, but the President considering 
all the circumstances commuted their sentence to life imprisonment 
and they are now incarcerated in Rajamundry jail.

But it is difficult to imagine that a container with a wide mouth 
carrying at least 60 liters of petrol was
meant to cause just an innocuous incident on the Sabarmati Express. 
Clearly there are many questions to
be answered, particularly in light of the subsequent events for which 
even the National Human Rights
Commission, headed by as widely respected jurist as the former Chief 
Justice of India, Justice AN Verma,
found the Gujarat government complicit. The chota Sardar in Gujarat 
is plowing on remorselessly with his campaign of igniting communal 
passions, and the bada Sardar in New Delhi just sits there wringing 
his
hands. As he did when the Babri Masjid was demolished. As he did when 
Hindus were killed in Doda. As he did when Sikhs were killed in 
Anantnag. As he did when Christians were killed in the Dangs.  As he 
did when the Red Fort was attacked. As he did when Parliament was 
attacked on December 13. Shakespeare=EDs wrote about Lady Macbeth: "It 
is an accustom=EDd action with her, to seem thus washing her hands."


Mohan Guruswamy
Email: mguru@satyam.net.in
July 5, 2002
_____

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