The Hindu Business Line : Interim report on Godhra incident — Raises more questions than it answers

Mr Justice U.C. Banerjee (left) presenting his committee's interim report on the Godhra train fire to the Railway Board Chairman, Mr R. K. Singh. — Anu Pushkarna

ONE can find fault with the timing of the release of the interim report of the Justice U. C. Banerjee Committee and the BJP can heap all the accusations it wishes on the Railway Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief, Mr Lalu Prasad, on why, how and when the report was released. But the interim report, which says that the Godhra tragedy was an accident and not a "conspiracy" hatched by the 75 people now in jail for the offence, raises several interesting points and makes some serious observations on railway safety.

The long and short of the interim report is that no "inflammable liquid" such as petrol or a chemical substance was used to ignite the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express on that fateful day — February 27, 2002 — at Godhra. It also rules out the possibility of an electrical fire or "miscreant activity from any external agency".

What will certainly be controversial in a report that has already drawn protests from the BJP and other members of the Sangh Parivar is the observation of the panel that it is "unbelievable" that kar sevaks armed with trishuls would allow themselves to be "burnt without a murmur". The report notes that there was evidence of cooking inside the coach by the kar sevaks and the fire could have been sparked either by a stove or a cigarette butt.

The report was presented on Monday to the Railway Board Chairman, Mr R. K. Singh, by Mr Justice Bannerjee, who observed that what the report had to say on the measures the Railways takes for the safety of its passengers would "not be palatable to the Railways."

Forget the report's comments on how passenger safety was compromised at Godhra, the entire report has turned out to be "unpalatable" to the BJP, which insists that there was no need for the Railway Minister to constitute this panel in the first place.

The BJP General Secretary, Mr Arun Jaitley, has termed the setting up of the panel an "extra-constitutional act". He has said it has no "legal status" and questioned its need when a criminal trial was already in progress, as also the Justice Nanavati Commission of Inquiry.

According to their ideologies, political parties have either welcomed or slammed the panel report. While the irrepressible Mr Prasad has accused the BJP, the Modi Government in Gujarat and the Sangh Parivar of "involvement in the post-Godhra riots", the Congress(I) and the Left parties have said that the panel's findings have nailed the "Modi government's lies" that a deliberate conspiracy was hatched to torch the kar sevaks travelling by the Sabarmati Express.

The BJP's chagrin can be understood given the accusations that the saffron party and the rest of the Sangh Parivar hurled at not only the Muslim community, in general, but also secularists — including Hindu liberals — for finding fault with its Hindutva ideology and its politics coloured by communalism.

Over the last three years, Godhra has become both a weapon and a shield for the Sangh Parivar outfits; a weapon to attack the Muslims by pointing out their belligerence and "terror tactics" and a shield to defend the worst communal carnage this country saw post-Independence.

Godhra has been a stick that the saffronites have wielded at the drop of a hat to put Indian Muslims on the defensive. Small wonder, then, that the BJP swung into action with all in its arsenal to pooh-pooh the preliminary report of the Banerjee panel.

The Vadodara Range IGP, Mr Rakesh Asthana, who heads the Special Investigation Team probing the Godhra incident, claimed that the SIT investigation, "supported by scientific and oral evidence" had clearly established that the whole incident was a "carefully planned and meticulously executed criminal conspiracy". He added that the police investigation had ruled out "accidental fire" in the coach; the Gujarat police's stance all along has been that the fire was started by miscreants forcibly entering the compartment with cans of petrol, dousing it with the fluid, de-training and then throwing burning rags inside to set the coach aflame.

As though the beleaguered BJP's woes were not enough, another panel of independent engineers, on the basis of scientific review of the physical evidence, testimony of the witnesses and medical records of the victims, has come out with findings that broadly support the Justice Banerjee Committee's interim findings. They find the pattern of the fire in the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express similar to other railway coaches that have had fire accidents.

But whatever the findings of the Justice Banerjee Committee, the timing of the release of the report is significant indeed.

Coming as it does on the eve of the Bihar elections, and rapping as it does Lalu's bete noir and the former Union Railway Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, as well as the Railway administration, for failing to conduct a statutory inquiry into the incident, the report's findings will certainly add political mileage for Mr Prasad as well as his allies vis-à-vis the Muslim vote in Bihar — a solid 16.5 per cent according to the 2001 Census.

If at all the timing of the report is a "conspiracy" and proves the BJP's "worst fears true", as Mr Jaitley put it, it is certainly Mr Prasad's ingenious attempt to ensure that his biggest strength in successive elections — the Muslim-Yadav vote — stays with him and is not appropriated by the Congress(I), which has this time refused to dance to the RJD chief's tunes and accept the miserable 25 seats he had offered it for the Bihar Assembly elections.

With the Congress having decided to field 80 candidates in Bihar and there being an outside chance of about 30-40 of them making it, Lalu is apprehensive that its ally in the UPA Government will wean away a good percentage of his Muslim vote.

With 30 seats or more, the Congress support would become absolutely necessary for installing an RJD government yet again if the party does manage to emerge as the single largest entity. And an RJD dependent on the Congress in Patna would mean a much more restrained Lalu Prasad at the Centre!

But the tragedy in the midst of these political games is one is still left wondering what the truth is vis-à-vis Godhra. It is unfortunate that issues such as the safety of railway passengers and communal unity — so crucial to India's image of a truly secular country — are tossed around at the whims and fancies of our political players, sometimes in Ahmedabad, sometimes in Patna, and all the time in New Delhi.

(Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in)

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