What really happened at Godhra can only be known by sifting fact from fiction. TEHELKA exposes the police's case in Godhra
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THE STORY AT A GLANCE
For five years, Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government in Gujarat have evoked the Sabarmati Express tragedy at Godhra as a justification for the cataclysmic pogrom of Muslims that followed. They claim the arson was not just the horrible result of mob fury spinning out of control, but a premeditated communal conspiracy. TEHELKA's painstaking six-month long investigation exposed a disturbing trail of lies and subversion through force and bribery. This, in brief, is the story of its findings.
THE POLICE VERSION
The broadstrokes of the police's claims are as follows:
Several religious and political Muslim leaders of Godhra — Maulvi Umarji; two Muslim corporators, Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana; a guesthouse owner, Rajjak Kurkur; and a hawker, Salim Paanwala conspired to burn coach S-6 (not just any coach but, for some unexplained reason, coach S-6 in particular) of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002.
Mohammad Hussain Kalota Shaikh, then president of the Godhra Municipal Council, and two Muslim corporators, Salim Shaikh and Abdur Rahman Dhantiya were among the mob, inciting people to burn the train. However, the police do not claim to know if these men were also involved in the conspiracy.
The police claim coach S-6 was set on fire after a large quantity of petrol was poured on its floor. They say 140 litres of this petrol was bought on February 26, 2002 from Kalabhai's petrol pump, owned by a Muslim. The petrol was carried the next morning by nine Muslim hawkers, and inexplicably, one reluctant Hindu hawker, to Cabin A, where the Sabarmati Express had stalled.
The Sabarmati Express halted at Cabin A, not because of chainpulling by karsevaks but by three Muslim hawkers who scaled three different coaches of the moving train and turned the discs. (It is important the police prove this or their conspiracy theory falls flat. After all, had the train not halted outside Cabin A, how could the hawkers have set fire to S-6?)
The police claim that some hawkers cut the 6-inch thick vestibule connecting coaches S-6 and S-7 with ordinary scissors and entered S-6. They then poured petrol on the floor of the coach. Some petrol was also thrown inside through a broken window.
POLICE EVIDENCE TO BACK THEIR THEORY
The police's case rests chiefly on statements by nine BJP party members who claim to be eyewitnesses. Between them they have identified and accused 41 Godhra Muslims. (Dileep Dasadiya, one the nine BJP men, has since completely retracted his statement.)
The case also rests on statements by karsevaks travelling in S-6 and other coaches. Their claim: the mob was throwing petrol and kerosene, acid bulbs, petrol bulbs and mashaals through broken windows and sprinkling inflammable liquid on the coach.
Three karsevaks first clai med they'd fainted due to the smoke and not seen anything. Two months later, they changed their stand and said they'd seen some liquid being poured on the floor of the coach. These new statements were recorded on May 7, 2002 — 15 days before the first charge sheet — and became the main thrust of the police case.
Though it discounted that S-6 was set on fire by inflammable liquid thrown through the window or sprinkled on the exterior of the coach, the forensic report claimed "60 litres of petrol may have been thrown along the floor of the coach from the southern direction..." This became the accepted theory.
A month and a half after the first chargesheet, the police produced a "know-all witness" — Ajay Baria, a Hindu tea vendor, who inexplicably claimed he'd been forcibly taken along by nine Muslim hawkers to load petrol and set S-6 on fire. Baria, the cornerstone of their case, now lives under close police vigil.
Two weeks after arresting them, the police produced two Muslim hawkers — Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar — who said they had scaled the train and turned the discs to stop it. Both have since retracted through affidavits in the Supreme Court.
A Muslim hawker, Jabir Binyamin Bahera, confessed he was part of the group of hawkers that had cut the vestibule and poured the petrol along the floor of the coach. He said two Muslim corporators — Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana — had told him coach S-6 had to be burnt as Maulvi Umarji had instructed. Bahera has since retracted his statement through an affidavit in court.
A year after the incident, the police produced two Hindu salesmen — Prabhatsingh Patel and Ranjitsingh Patel — employed by Kalabhai petrol pump, who claimed they'd sold 140 litres of petrol to the accused on the evening of February 26, 2002. Significantly, the two had first said they'd not sold any loose petrol to anybody on that day or the evening before. They now have 24 hour police protection.
Sikandar Siddik is another police witness. He clai med he saw Muslim hawkers setting S-6 on fire and that Maulvi Umarji told him he was paying Rs 1,500 to the accused. He also said he'd seen corporators — Bilal Haji and Farooq Bhana — near the coach. Additionally, he said he saw Maulvi Yakub Punjabi inciting the mob. (The police detained Punjabi, but had to let him go be c a use Punjabi was not in India but in Saudi Arabia at the time of the incident.)
The police also used confessions from six other Muslim hawkers who, according to the police, admitted to their role in the burning of coach S-6 at the behest of Maulvi Umarji and the Muslim corporators. All six have since retracted their confessions.
The truth of what really happened in Godhra can only be known by discarding what did not happen. TEHELKA's investigation uncovered some heinous fictions.
FICTION The two salesmen — Ranjitsingh Patel and Prabhatsingh Patel — who claimed they sold 140 litres of petrol to Muslim hawkers in their statements were actually bribed by the chief investigating officer, Noel Parmar, to say this and falsely identify people. TEHELKA caught Ranjitsingh on camera admitting to this. The amount paid to each was Rs 50,000.
FICTION The nine BJP members who identified 41 Muslims were actually not even present at the station that day. The TEHELKA undercover reporter caught two of them — Kakul Pathak and Murli Mulchandani — on camera, categorically admitting that they were not there that day, and that the police had filed statements in their name without their knowledge and they had colluded to serve Hindutva.
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FICTION Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar who were arrested by the police and made to claim that they had turned the discs that stopped the train at Cabin A were actually tortured by Noel Parmar and his team into doing so. Illias told the TEHELKA reporter that while they were in custody, Parmar's men would put a log on his leg and walk on it. Kalandar said they had put electric current on his genitals. A year after their statements to the police, the two had returned from enforced exile and retracted their statements through an affidavit in court.
FICTION Ajay Baria, the inexplicable Hindu vendor whose statement seemed to stitch the police's theory neatly into place, is no longer allowed to live in Godhra. He is tailed by two policemen round the clock. TEHELKA could not speak to him directly but spoke to his mother. The mother said Baria had become a police witness out of fear.
FICTION Maulvi Umarji, whose alleged role in the conspiracy, is crucial to uphold the police's theory was not present at the site during the incident. The allegations against him rest on two statements. Significantly, Jabir Bin Bahera, who first named him, later retracted his statement. Sikandar Siddik, the other witness who named Umarji, proved himself unreliable — he had named Maulvi Yakub Punjabi as well as Umarji. It turned out Punjabi wasn't even in India on the day of the incident.
FICTION The forensic report had effectively demolished the police and State's contention that S-6 was burnt by inflammable liquid either thrown in through broken windows or sprinkled outside the coach. The new and current theory that S-6 was burnt because of petrol thrown along its floor is based on the statements of three karsevaks who, just three months earlier, had said they had fainted due to the smoke and thus seen nothing.
Untenable theories, bribed witnesses, coerced statements. In a staggering investigation, ASHISH KHETAN uncovers the deliberate and malicious subversion of the truth in Godhra
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| The Inferno Coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on fire on February 27,2002. Photo:AP |
The bigger the lie, the more people believe it.
Adolf Hitler
THERE WERE no ill portents as the Sabarmati Express drew into Godhra station at 7:43am on February 27, 2002, five hours behind schedule. The last of winter still hung in the air, and elsewhere in the country, people were busying themselves with an ordinary new day, getting to school or work or back to sleep, when the news began to break. A fire was raging through the crammed coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express, stalled just outside Godhra station. Fifty-nine people had been burnt to death — some karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, some ordinary passengers on their way back to Gujarat from Sultanpur, Allahabad and Lucknow.
The country was horrified by the gruesome tragedy, but there was no immediate sense then that the incident at Godhra was to become one of the most corrosive ruptures in our nation's recent history. As 24-hour news channels across the country played and replayed the gory and traumatic pictures, tension mounted. Angry — and valid — questions were asked. How did the fire start? Who were the perpetrators? Was it an accident or an act of arson? If arson, was it preplanned or spontaneous?
The horrific deaths at Godhra cried out for the truth. And justice. Gujarat, already fragmented, already simmering with latent communal hostility, now brimmed with a dangerous and restive anger. What people had needed then was justice, the uncompromised truth — and a healing touch from their government.
Instead, within a few hours, the incident at Godhra — heinous as it already was — began to be converted into a lethal communal hacksaw. The charred bodies were taken from hospitals and paraded in emotive processions across the state. The 59 dead were not allowed the dignity of individual identities, but morphed into one terrifying, unified, rage-inducing idea: Hindu
karsevaks murdered by Muslims. And in less than 12 hours — even before the first tentative facts could be established, even before the police had registered their first FIR, even while the post mortems of the dead were still on — Chief Minister Narendra Modi issued a press release declaring war: "The abominable event that has occurred at Godhra does not befit any civilized society," he said. "This is not a mere communal event but a one-sided collective terrorist attack by one community."
The first of the fires began to burn that night itself. Over the next three days, more than 2,000 Muslims were killed. Hacked, shot, burnt, raped. Thousands of Muslim houses were burned, dozens of mosques desecrated. The rhetoric of hate reached a fever pitch. They had it coming, Modi said.
The truth about Godhra underlies everything cataclysmic that happened afterwards. The truth about Godhra underlies one of the most dangerous and polarising faultlines in India. The truth about Godhra underlies the very way we see ourselves as a nation.
For five years, Modi — and the political spectrum he represents — has sought moral refuge in the claim that the genocide in Gujarat was a spontaneous reaction to a premeditated action. For five years, he and his government have claimed that the incident in Godhra was not a spontaneous burst of mob fury that got out of hand, but a conspiracy pre-planned by significant religious and political Muslim leaders. For five years, the Modi administration's justification of the pogrom in Gujarat has largely hinged on the culpability of eight men: the president of the Godhra Municipal Council, Mohammad Hussain Kalota Shaikh; four Muslim corporators — Bilal Haji, Farooq Mohammad Bhana, Salim Shaikh and Abdul Rahman Dhantiya; two Muslim advocates — Rol Amin Hussain Hathila and Habib Karim Shaikh; and the local religious head, Maulvi Umarji.
For five years, the people, the courts, and the press have been told that they are the killers. It is the entire basis of Modi's action-reaction theory. Subtract these eight religious and political figures from the list of 134 accused in the Sabarmati Express fire and what remains are sundry hawkers, labourers and truck drivers. Subtract the political and religious names from the list of Godhra accused and what remains is a criminal but spontaneous act of arson. Subtract the political and religious angle to the Godhra tragedy, and Modi's diabolic action-reaction theory comes crashing down.
So were these eight men culpable?
Some political groups and some sections of civil society have claimed that Modi himself was behind the blaze in Godhra. They claim he got coach S-6 burned so that he could orchestrate a pogrom and reap its political dividends.
Is that the truth?
TEHELKA undertook a six-month long investigation to get at the truth of what really happened in Godhra. The painstaking investigation uncovered a web of lies entwined with truth, a mash of fact served up with fiction. Our quest shocked us: not because the truth was hard to find, but because it was in abundance, it was everywhere, in case papers, in statements of survivors, out in the streets. Our quest shocked us: not because the truth itself is shocking, but because the elaborate and malicious way in which it has been subverted is. What we found tears at the status quo and demands redressal. It proves everything Modi and his government have been claiming is a lie. Not just an ordinary lie, but a deliberate and manufactured one. Executed through bribery and coercion.
This is the story of what we found. As always, the truth is in the detailsTHE ARRIVAL: Sabarmati Express enters Godhra station
7:43AM. February 27, 2002. Sabarmati Express, Train No. 9166 UP, carrying karsevaks on their way back from Ayodhya arrives on platform No. 1 at Godhra railway station. The train is nearly five hours behind schedule.
THE FIRST PROVOCATION: Karsevaks clash with Muslim tea vendors on the platform
A key element in the Godhra case is the question, what catalysed the mob? The Modi government claims it was an unprovoked, pre-planned act. This is belied by the testimonies of two passengers who were aboard coach S-6 and were lucky to survive the inferno. Both men were not karsevaks or members of the VHP or Bajrang Dal, but ordinary passengers traveling back from their native places to Ahmedabad, where they were working at the time. Both told the police that there was a quarrel on the platform between karsevaks and tea vendors. These are their testimonies.
Laltakumar Balkrishan Jadhav, 32, Deputy Manager (Civil) in Gandhigram Gas Authority of India Limited, travelling from Guna in Madhya Pradesh — his hometown — to Ahmedabad. Jadhav had a reservation for seat number 32 in coach S-7 but karsevaks did not allow him to board the coach. "Thereupon," says Jadhav in his statement, "I requested an army man standing at the door of S-6 and he spared me some space and allowed me to keep my bags and stand there. Thus I had started my journey on February 26, 2002 at 20.15pm in coach no. S-6 of Sabarmati Express. On February 27, 2002, Sabarmati Express had arrived on platform number 1 of Godhra railway station. I had not alighted from the train. At that time there was some verbal quarrel between the karsevaks and activists of Bajrang Dal and the hawkers."
Govindsingh Ratnasing Pande, 46, army man, posted at Ahmedabad, travelling from Lucknow to Ahmedabad: "I had a reservation on berth number 9 in coach no. S-6 in Sabarmati Express. The train arrived at 1:15am at Lucknow station on 26.2.2002. I boarded coach no S-6 and found five to six ladies sitting on seat number 9. I showed them my ticket and told them to vacate the seat. Thereupon one person from Bajrang Dal, of age 50-52 years, told me the ladies would find it difficult to go to the upper berth and asked me to take berth number 3. After putting my luggage under berth number 9, I seated myself on berth number 3. There were about 250 people in the coach, most of the passengers were sitting without reservation and were members of Bajrang Dal. On every station where the train would stop, Bajrang Dal members would get down on the platform and shout slogans of Jai Shri Ram. On 27.2.2002, between 7:30am to 7:45am, the train had reached platform number 1 of Godhra railway station. I therefore got up. Ten to twelve members of Bajrang Dal had alighted from my coach and started to shout slogans of Jai Shri Ram. At that time, I had felt that members of Bajrang Dal had also alighted from other coaches and were shouting slogans of Jai Shri Ram. There was loud noise on the platform. After three to four minutes, a few people from Bajrang Dal came running inside the coach and after closing the door shouted that a quarrel had taken place on the platform and stones were being pelted. They told everybody to shut the windows and doors."
THE SECOND PROVOCATION: Some karsevaks try to abduct a Muslim girl from the platform
There was more than just a verbal quarrel on the platform. Some karsevaks had tried to abduct a Muslim girl from the platform. Sophia Bano M. Shaikh, a little less than 18 years old, accompanied by her mother and sister, were visiting relatives in Godhra and had come to the railway station to board a train for their hometown, Vadodara. Though their statements were recorded by the police on March 28, 2002 — a month after the Godhra incident — the police neither mentioned the episode nor included their statements in the first chargesheet that was filed on May 22, 2002. These statements were only made a part of the first supplementary chargesheet filed four months later, on September 20, 2002, as part of the chain of events that led to setting the train on fire.
In her police statement, Sophia states: "My mother, sister and I left from my uncle's house on foot at around 7:30am and came to Godhra railway station. The EMU train departs from platform number 1, so we were waiting near the water house on platform 1. At this time, the Sabarmati train coming from Dahod side pulled in on the platform. Some people from the train came down to the platform. They had a saffron stripe around their head with something like 'Jai Bajrang' written on it. They were shouting 'Jai Shri Ram'. These people appeared to have got down from the train to have tea and snacks. In the meantime, some of these people wearing saffron stripes came to the place where we were standing. They were beating a person with a beard on his face, using a stick. He was a Muslim, and they were shouting, "Beat…kill musalmans", and therefore we were frightened.
Thereupon, my mother, sister and I started to go towards the musafirkhana. At this time, one man from the same group came from behind and pressed my mouth with his hands and tried to drag me towards the coach of the train. When my mother saw this, she raised cries "Save her… save her." Thereupon the person who had caught hold of me, let me go. We were very frightened and stood inside the office of the booking clerk. After some time we gave up the idea of going to Vadodara and came out of the office, took a rickshaw and went back to the house of my aunty in Signal Faliya [a Muslim neighbourhood adjacent to the Godhra railway station]." According to Sophia, the karsevaks also tried to abduct another burqa-clad woman on the platform. However, the police have failed to identify the woman or record her statement till date.
After this squabble with the karsevaks, the Muslims on the platform started pelting stones at the train. Pande, the army man aboard coach S-6, as well as many other passengers on the train, have corroborated this fact.
THE FIRST HALT: Chain is pulled; the Sabarmati stops just outside the station
A few minutes later, the train left the platform. According to the train driver, Rajendrarao Raghunath Rao, he got a green signal at about 7:45am. "The train had started moving towards Vadodara," says Rao in his statement, "when the chain was pulled at about 7:47am and the train stopped. My assistant driver and guard found that the chain had been pulled from coach numbers 83101, 5343, 51263 and 88238 and we informed the stationmaster about this through a walky-talky."
Throughout this time, the stone pelting continued from the direction of the platform. This is corroborated by both Pande, the army man, and another ordinary passenger, Amarkumar Jamnaprasad Tiwari, 19, who was travelling with his father, mother, sister-in-law and nephew from Uttar Pradesh, their native place, to Ahmedabad.
According to Pande, "After running for about 30 to 40 metres, a chain was pulled and the train stopped. Thereupon more members of Bajrang Dal came running and boarded our coach [S-6]. At that time, there was normal stone pelting from the platform side."
Tiwari too says the train had stopped moments after it left the platform. "I heard the sound of stone pelting on the coach," he says, "and some stones had started coming into the coach through the windows."
Amidst this chaos, the railway staff managed to fix the chain pulling in the aforementioned four coaches and the train began to move again.
THE FATEFUL HALT: Chain is pulled again, the Sabarmati halts near Cabin A
8:00am. After moving a short distance, once again a chain was pulled and the train came to a halt near Cabin A. The time is recorded by Assistant Station Master (ASM) Harimohan Meena who was manning the cabin. The driver, Rao, says he saw a 900-1,000 strong mob near Cabin A, pelting stones at the train. The stone pelting had obviously intensified and begun to break the window panes of coaches. Both ASM Meena and survivors of S-6 testify to this. Amarkumar Tiwari says that all through the time the train started and stopped for the second time, there was constant stone throwing from the left side. "On account of this, window panes had broken in our coach and my brother's wife, my mother and I were hit by these stones." Pande, the army man, says much the same. "When the train stopped for the second time
about a kilometre from the station, there was heavy stone throwing from the left side. As the doors and windows of the coach were shut, a few panes got broken. Some passengers sustained injuries from the stones and had started bleeding."
GROUND ZERO: Mob fury intensifies
The Muslim mob had chased the train down to Cabin A. The driver, Rao, saw the mob but was separated from it by eight to ten coaches. The police personnel had not yet reached the spot. So the two officials closest to Ground Zero were ASM Meena and his colleague, AK Sharma, both manning Cabin A. This is what Meena told the police in his statement on March 1, 2002 — a day after the Godhra incident. "At about 7:55am, the train had again started. Within five minutes, it came near Cabin A. At that moment, the driver of Sabarmati Express blew the chain-pulling whistle and the train stopped. About eight to ten coaches had already passed beyond Cabin A. I got down from the cabin to set the chain right and enquire about what had happened. On going near the train, I found a mob of about 200 to 500 people running towards the train from the back and surrounding area. They were pelting stones. I came running back to my cabin and from the cabin itself I instructed passengers sitting in the coaches to shut the windows and doors. A few passengers who came down were beaten up by the mob."
What exactly transpired between ASM Meena and the mob?
Meena is silent on the issue in his statement to the police. TEHELKA's undercover reporter decided to meet him posing as a research scholar. Meena — not aware that he was talking to a journalist or being recorded — said that when he came down and asked the mob why they were chasing the train, a few people from the mob replied that one of their people had been abducted by the karsevaks on the train. Meena also said that he heard a few in the mob suggesting that the coach be set on fire to drive people out of the coach so they could recover their person. But he saw no swords, any other sharp weapon or inflammable material being carried by the mob. On the contrary, according to him, the mob mainly consisted of women and children carrying sticks and pelting stones.
TINDERBOX: A jam-packed coach S-6 is a waiting death trap
By all accounts, S-6 was bursting at its seams. The number of passengers in the coach was at least three times its normal capacity. According to eyewitnesses there were about 250 passengers. The doors and windows were completely shut. Further, to prevent the mob from forcing their way into the compartment, the passengers had blocked all the doors with their luggage.
As one of the survivors of S-6, army personnel Govindsingh Rajput says, "I and three or four other people opened a door on the right side of the coach with great effort because to prevent the people outside from opening the doors, passengers had blocked the doors on both sides of the coach with their luggage."
Laltakumar Jadhav corroborates this. "Karsevaks, Bajrang Dal activists and other passengers of the coach had assembled their baggage near the doors of the coach and to see that nobody could enter the coach."
Outside, having tried unsuccessfully to dissuade the mob from attacking the train, the frightened Meena ran back to Cabin A. His colleague Sharma, the only other person present in the cabin, never stepped out. In his police statement, Meena said: "I was frightened and came running back to Cabin A. I asked Akhil Kumar Sharma to close all the doors and windows of the cabin. Sharma had already informed the DSS (Deputy Station Superintendent) Godhra and Vadodara control room on the railway phone that the Sabarmati Express was being pelted by stones to a great extent by a mob. After informing the RPF , the phone started ringing and I and Sharma started replying the same."
Inside the train too, no one could quite make out what was happening outside.
As Pande, the army man, and another co-passenger Rajendrasingh Rajput have testified, the karsevaks and Bajrang Dal activists had got everybody in coach S-6 to shut the doors and windows, so neither Pande nor Rajput could see what was happening outside the coach.
This was the case with most of the coaches. Saburbhai Parmar, a karsevak who was traveling in a general compartment, says in his police statement, "As there was stone throwing we had closed the windows and doors and sat inside the coach… I was frightened and did not see any person." Another karsevak in a general compartment, Sanjay Sukhadiya, says the same. "I had seen a mob of about 1,000 to 1,500 persons pelting stones at the train and coming nearer and nearer. We ramsevaks were all frightened and had not opened the windows and doors."
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| Ghosts of Godhra The burning of coach S-6 triggered a massive pogrom against Muslims |
SMOKE AND FIRE: Eyewitness accounts by S-6 passengers
At about 8:30am, Meena first spotted smoke rising from S-6. Passengers aboard S-6 too first saw the smoke and then the fire. This is what Pande, the army man, said in his statement on 1 April, 2002: "Members of Bajrang Dal and other passengers were shouting and hiding the women and children below the last seat. After 10 to 15 minutes, all of a sudden smoke erupted from seat number 72 and within some time flames were seen. I and three or four other people who were sitting on the upper seat got down and opened the door on the right side of the coach with great effort because to prevent the people outside from opening the doors, passengers had blocked the doors on both sides of the coach with their luggage. Some other people and karsevaks also alighted from the coach."
Rajendrasingh Rajput, also travelling in S-6 with his father, said, "A mob of about 100 to 150 people in the northern direction were throwing stones at the train. The people in this mob were armed with pipes, dhariyas and swords. As I came out through the window, they hit me on my leg, shoulder and hands with pipes and stones. My father had felt suffocated by the smoke in the coach. I had also sustained burn injuries on both my hands and ears. Thereafter, people from Godhra had taken me and my father to the Godhra civil hospital."
After getting down from the train, Pande says he saw "boys of 15 to 16 years of age taking rounds around the train. They were armed with iron rods and knives. On seeing them, I ran for about 70 to 80 feet. Then some of them surrounded me. By that time, I had sustained some injuries on my right hand due to the stone throwing. The boys were shouting, "Maaro… maaro." I told the boys I was an army man. They asked for proof. I pulled out my warrant from my pocket. One boy, after seeing my warrant, told the others I was an army man and nobody should beat me. The other boys then asked for my name. The said boy read out my name, upon which the other boys said I was a Hindu and one of them hit me with an iron rod on my head. My head started bleeding and I felt dizzy. Then, the said boy, after driving away the other boys, dropped me on the main road."
EMERGING CONTRADICTIONS: Was the mob carrying petrol and kerosene? Among survivors of coach S-6, only the karsevaks claim so
Neither Meena — the only official who witnessed the mob from close quarters — nor any of the survivors who were not karsevaks in S-6, like army man Pande and Rajendrasingh Rajput, saw any inflammable material like petrol, kerosene or diesel being carried by the mob. Nor did they see coach S-6 being set on fire. Satish Misra, a businessman in Vadodara who was travelling back with his family from Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh on S-6, and who lost his wife in the blaze, says, "Upon hearing that there was stone pelting on the coach, we had closed the windows and doors... As there were fumes of smoke on account of the fire I could not see any people pelting stones or who set the coach on fire."
The only people who claim to have seen the mob carrying inflammable material are some of the karsevaks in S-6 who survived and karsevaks in other coaches. Interestingly, all these karsevaks admit that they had shut the doors and windows of their coaches because of the heavy stone pelting, yet in the same breath they claim they saw the mob armed with all kinds of inflammable material.
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| 'I wasn't at the station, I was sleeping at home. But the police put me among the witnesses' -MURLI MULCHANDANI |
PANIC AND PREJUDICE: The karsevaks' testimonies: how reliable are they?
In a telling detail that throws their credibility into question, many of the surviving karsevaks from S-6 who claim to have seen the mob carrying inflammable material have given identical statements — word for word. For instance, four karsevaks (also from Mehsana) — Jayantibhai Patel, Babubhai Patel, Dwarkabhai Patel and Hirabhai Patel — who were all part of the same group and were travelling back together with VHP's Mehsana district unit president, have given statements that mirror each other right down to the smallest comma. But even these four didn't claim they had seen the mob setting the coach on fire, they only claimed to have seen the mob carrying inflammable material.
What exactly is the inflammable material the karsevaks claim to have seen? The answer is bewildering in its range: a) acid bulbs, b) petrol bulbs, c) plastic containers carrying petrol and kerosene, d) mashaal or kakde (burning rags of cloth tied to a stick).
In their statements, the karsevaks have also mentioned every conceivable way in which the fire could have been started in coach S-6. According to them, the mob was a) throwing acid bulbs and petrol bulbs inside the coach, b) sprinkling petrol and kerosene on the coach from outside, c) pouring in kerosene and petrol inside the coach through broken windows, d) throwing burning rags in through broken windows.
Karsevaks as far from S-6 as those traveling in coaches S-2 and S-4, and the general compartments, have claimed they saw all of the above. How they could have known the nature of what was being thrown from such a distance is not something they are able to explain.
Can the testimonies of these karsevaks then be taken at face value? The answer is no. Many of the testimonies of karsevaks who survived from coach S-6 are biased and factually incorrect for the following reasons:
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| 'Noel saheb gave me fifty thousand, showed me a photograph and said I had to identify him' -RANJITSINGH PATEL |
For one, it is the karsevaks from coach S-6 who, along with karsevaks from other coaches, were involved in the scuffle on the platform — a fact corroborated by Pande, the army man, and even substantiated by the police. Yet, none of the karsevaks mention the scuffle or the aborted abduction at the platform in their original statements. They cut straight to the stone pelting by a Muslim mob and overlook what triggered it.
What's worse is that as things progressed, many karsevaks manufactured statements convenient to the prosecution as and when it was required. Whenever the police would come up with a new theory to explain the cause of fire, they would approach karsevaks who would readily corroborate the new theory by making completely new statements — many of them a complete reversal of their earlier statements.
AN IMPARTIAL EYE: Was there any neutral survivor, not a karsevak but an ordinary passenger, from coach S-6 who saw any possible source of fire?
The answer is yes. A family of four — Lallan Prasad Chaurasiya, his wife Jankiben, their 13- year-old son Gyan Prakash, and a toddler Rushabh — were aboard coach S-6. The Chaurasiyas were travelling back from their native town of Allahabad and had two reserved seats in coach S-6 — seats number 8 and 72.
However, karsevaks had occupied seat number 72, so the entire family travelled on seat number 8. Later they all shifted to seat number 6. This is what 13-year-old Gyan Prakash said in his statement recorded on March 4, 2002: "Because of the stone pelting, people in the coach had closed the windows and doors of the coach. However, the stone pelting continued on our coach and as a result the windowpanes were broken. Before the iron window could be closed, some burning substance had come inside and immediately there was black smoke inside the coach. Seeing this, I immediately told my mother to get out of the train along with my sister's son, Rushabh.
At that time, we were sitting on the upper berth and because of the smoke, nothing could be seen. Leaving our luggage behind, my parents and I opened a door of the compartment and got down. When I reached my father, he told me that as he was alighting with Rushabh someone came and snatched him. My mother and I searched for Rushabh but we could not find him." Gyan Prakash's parents, both Lallan Prasad and Jankiben, corroborated that some burning substance had fallen in through a window and after that black smoke had filled the coach. None of the Chaurasiyas however said that they saw the mob carrying petrol or kerosene or containers filled with inflammable liquid.
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| 'The police gave all the names. None of the eyewitnesses wrote their statements. The police did' -KAKUL PATHAK |
Laltakumar Jadhav said that though he did not see the mob starting the fire, after he had escaped from the burning coach he did see "some people from the mob trying to further set coach number S-6 on fire by putting grass, quilts, etc below the coach." But Jadhav too did not see any inflammable material or plastic containers being carried by the mob.
THE MOOT QUESTION: A pre-planned conspiracy or a spontaneous riot?
A detailed study of statements and eye-witness accounts, like the one above, clearly suggests that the burning of coach S-6 was an instance of spontaneous vandalism that snowballed out of control. Provoked by the attempted abduction and the karsevaks' fight with Muslim hawkers at the station, the hawkers began to pelt stones at the train, and then, as the mob gathered strength and force, someone in the mob eventually threw burning rags into the coach that started the fire.
But instead of investigating the facts, chief minister Narendra Modi visited Godhra and the same evening announced that the burning of coach S-6 was an act of premeditated terrorism carried out by one community against another. The crime of a few had morphed into the sin of an entire community. There was absolutely no evidence to support his claim. But since the head of the state government had made the claim, the police started a massive exercise of manufacturing evidence.
Over the next three years, the police and the ruling BJP government used all the resources at their disposal — power, money, men — to prove that the Godhra incident was a conspiracy hatched by the local Muslim political and religious leadership, a claim which Modi and his party have used to justify the mass killings of Muslims post-Godhra.
MANUFACTURING TRUTH: Nine members of the BJP's Godhra unit turn up and claim that Muslim politicians of Godhra were present in the mob
Apart from police personnel and the fire brigade, the first independent witnesses to come forward and identify people from the mob were nine BJP men, among them a few important functionaries of the party's Godhra unit. Between them, these nine men claimed to have identified 41 Muslims from Godhra town as part of the mob. Among the 41 they named were the president of the Godhra Municipal Council, Mohammad Hussain Kalota Shaikh; four Muslim corporators — Bilal Haji, Farooq Mohammad Bhana, Salim Shaikh and Abdul Rahman Dhantiya; and two Muslim advocates — Rol Amin Hussain Hathila and Habib Karim Shaikh.
The first question that strikes one is, what were these nine BJP men doing at the station? None of them was travelling on the Sabarmati Express nor had any plans to board any train from Godhra. So what were they doing there so early in the morning? They have an explanation — common to all of them. "On 27.2.2002, as the activists and karsevaks who had gone to Ayodhya were to come back on the Sabarmati Express, I and other activists were waiting at 6:30am at Godhra railway station to welcome them and serve them tea and snacks." All nine name eight VHP leaders who they claim were travelling on Sabarmati Express, and whom they were there to greet with refreshments. The statements of all nine were recorded on February 27, 2002, the same day as the incident.
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| The Kindle The bodies of victims were paraded in emotive processions. Photo: AP |
What exactly did these nine BJP men witness? They claim they witnessed everything — the assembling of the mob, the sharp-edged weapons and inflammable material it was carrying, and the actual setting of the fire itself. In nine identical statements they say, "At about 7:45am the Sabarmati Express arrived on platform number 1 at Godhra railway station… After welcoming activists, friends and other karsevaks, we had served them tea and snacks. When the train started, we had bid farewell with slogans of Jai Shri Ram. After this, we were still standing at the platform talking with local friends from Godhra, when the train stopped because of chain pulling.
After sometime, the train started again. When it reached near the 'A' cabin, again there were whistles of chain pulling. When we looked towards that direction, we heard cries from Signal Falia and saw a mob of about 900 to 1,000 people, including women, men and boys, rushing towards the train. We all ran towards the train, and when we reached near the said cabin, the people from Signal Falia armed with swords, dhariyas, sticks, and iron rods had rushed there and some others had started heavy stone throwing at the train.
These people were shouting, 'Saale Hinduoo ko maar daalo, mandir banane jaate hai…kaat dalo' (Kill these damn Hindus. They want to build a temple — cut them down!) Five to six people who had plastic containers of liquid in their hands had sprinkled the liquid from the said containers upon one compartment and set it ablaze. We had all stayed under the cover of the cabin."
The only variation in the nine statements of the BJP men is the names of culprits. Each of them has identified a different set of people from the mob.
Who are these nine BJP members?
_ Kakulkumar Pathak: Son of Nitinkumar Hariprasad Pathak, Kakul is a resident of Dwarkanagar, Bamroli Road, Godhra. He joined the BJP in 1984, and besides being in the construction business, he has always been an important member of the BJP's Godhra unit. He was twice appointed General Secretary of the BJP's Yuva Morcha in Godhra. Following this, he was appointed Joint Secretary of Godhra Nagar BJP. At present, he is a Taluka Panchayat delegate and the convenor of the BJP's media cell in Godhra.
_ Murlidhar Rochiram Mulchandani:
Mulchandani, 37, is a resident of Jilelal Faliya and a prominent businessman in Godhra town. He is also a senior BJP functionary. Two years before the Godhra incident, Mulchandani had lost the election for the seat of corporator. At present, he is the vice-president of the Godhra Municipal Council.
_ Janakbhai Kantilal Dave: Dave, 35, is a resident of village Samli in Godhra. He is a civil contractor and also a member of the BJP's Godhra unit.
_ Rajeshbhai Vithalbhai Darji: Darji, 43, is a resident of Shrimali Sheri, near Juhapura vegetable market, Godhra. He is a businessman affiliated with the BJP. About a year before the incident, Darji was ousted as the Godhra Municipal Council president by Kalota and Muslim corporators. At present, Darji is the Panchmahal district president of the BJP.
_ Dilipbhai Ujamsibhai Dasadiya: A businessman, Dasadiya, 39, lives at Prabha road, Godhra. At present he is president of the BJP's Godhra town unit.
_ Deepakbhai Nagindas Soni: A jeweller, Soni, 49, is a resident of Soniwad, Godhra. At the time of the Godhra incident, Soni was a sitting BJP corporator.
_ Hasmukhlal Tejardas Adwani: A businessman, Adwani, 49, lives in Zulelal Faliya, and is a member of the BJP.
_ Chandrashekhar Nachuram Sonaiya: Sonaiya, 43, who is in the agriculture business, is a resident of Paramhans society, Bamroli road, Godhra. He is also a member of the BJP.
_ Manoj Hiralal Adwani:Adwani, 29, lives on Prabha road, Godhra and is a BJP member.
SIMMERING RIVALRIES: The political context in Godhra
The town of Godhra is divided into 12 wards, each ward comprising three corporator seats. In December 1999, elections for the Godhra Municipal Council were held. The BJP won 11 seats, independent Muslim candidates won 16 seats, the Congress won five seats, and four seats were bagged by independent candidates, who were all Hindus but sympathetic to the BJP.
Murli Mulchandani, the current vice-president of the Godhra Municipal Council, had also contested but lost. To form the house in the council, a party needs 19 seats. The BJP formed the house with the support of five Congress corporators and three independent Muslim corporators. Raju Darji, a BJP corporator (who claims to be one of the witnesses of the fire) was elected the president. Deepak Soni, another BJP corporator (also one of the nine BJP witnesses) was appointed president of the education board formed under the council.
One year after the elections, 24 corporators — 16 Muslim, five Congress, and three independent Hindu corporators — joined ranks against the BJP and moved a no-confidence motion. The BJP lost the house. These 24 corporators now elected Kalota as the president of the Godhra Municipal Council. During a no-confidence motion debate, a Muslim corporator, Bilal Haji had beaten up the BJP corporator, Raju Darji, and a criminal complaint was lodged against him. In 2002, when the Sabarmati fire killed 59 Hindus, Raju Darji, Deepak Soni and Murli Mulchandani, along with six other BJP members, claim they saw Kalota, Bilal Haji and three other Muslim corporators "attacking the train".
THE DUPED AND THE DAMNED: The 41 accused by the nine BJP members
The accused identified by Kakulkumar Pathak and their current status: Pathak identified six people from the mob. He says all six "were armed with lethal weapons" and were "attacking the compartment of the train with the slogan Allah o Akbar. Thus they had created terror." (All nine BJP members use exactly the same phrase in their statements.) The six accused are:
_ Rol Amin Hussain Hathila: A practicing advocate. In jail for the last five years.
_ Siddique Ibrahim Hathila: Rol Amin's cousin and a businessman. Absconding since the Godhra incident.
_ Mohammad Kalu: A 65-year-old businessman. Is out on bail since July 2002.
_ Ismail Yusuf Chunga: A businessman. Pathak later changed the name to Ismail Yusuf Chungi. The police have failed to identify anyone with this name and Chunga has been absconding since the incident.
_ Ibrahim Adam Dhandiya: A businessman. Is absconding.
_Usman Abdulgani Coffeewala: A truck driver. Behind bars for the last five years.
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| Justice Denied The horrific tragedy at Godhra demands the truth, not political games. Photo: Daxesh |
DESIGN HEAD: Noel Parmar, a new investigating officer, takes over
On May 27, 2002 — five days after the first chargesheet — a new investigating officer is appointed. Noel Parmar, ACP control room of Vadodara City, takes over from KC Bawa, DySP of Western Railways, who had been investigating the case till then.
In an undercover conversation with Noel Parmar, who is currently posted as DySP, railway police, in Vadodara, TEHELKA found that Parmar was far from a neutral investigator. A few snatches of his conversation are enough to expose Parmar's deep-seated hatred for Muslims. Here are some of the statements he made: "During Partition, many Muslims of Godhra migrated to Pakistan… In fact, there is an area called Godhra Colony in Karachi… Every family in Godhra has a relative in Karachi… They are fundamentalists… This area, Signal Falia, was completely Hindu but gradually Muslims took over… In 1989 also there were riots… Eight Hindus were burnt alive… They all eat cow's meat since it comes cheap… No family has less than ten children… they are all complete fundamentalists, associated with the Tablighi Jamaat."
THE HINDU HAND: The entry of Ajay Baria, a 'know-all' witness
The first chargesheet was a mesh of conflicting and contradictory claims. To bring some method to the madness, the police produce a new witness — a tea vendor, not a Muslim but a Hindu — on July 9, 2002, a month and a half after the first chargesheet, and five months after the actual incident. Ajay Baria, the new witness was a tea vendor at Godhra railway station, and was unemployed at the time. He claimed that on the morning of February 27, 2002, just after the Sabarmati Express had arrived, nine hawkers — all Muslims — whom he knew since they all sold wares at Godhra station, forcibly took him to the house of Razzak Kurkur. Once there, the nine hawkers went inside Kurkur's house and brought out carboys filled with "kerosene" (he doesn't specify the number of carboys and he specifically uses the word kerosene).
He said that one of the hawkers then forced him to load one carboy onto a rickshaw while the remaining carboys were loaded by the other hawkers. (If there were already nine Muslim hawkers to load carboys onto the rickshaw, why did they need Baria to load just one carboy? Also, why Muslims would take a Hindu tea vendor along to execute a communal crime defies logic.) Baria said the rickshaw was parrot-coloured but he could not see its registration number. Once the carboys were loaded, the hawkers forced him to go along. The frightened Baria jumped into the rickshaw, which the hawkers then drove up to Cabin A, where the train was standing. According to him, a few hawkers first tried to set coach S-2 on fire.
When they failed, they cut the vestibule (connecting passage) between coaches S-6 and S-7. Having done that, six hawkers went inside S-6 and poured "kerosene" along the floor of the coach. Three others sprinkled kerosene through the windows into the coach. And one vendor then threw a burning cloth into coach S-6. Thus, the coach was set on fire.
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| Upping the ante FVHP and Bajrang Dal activists mobilised hate across the state Photo: Reuters |
THE CHAIN-PULLERS: Two more Muslim tea vendors are tortured and tutored till they agree to make a statement
With Ajay Baria's statement, several pieces fell into place for the police. They had found a witness to claim that "kerosene" was brought to the spot, to explain how the accused gained entry, and how the "kerosene" was poured into the coach along the floor before the coach was set on fire.
But one hitch remained. The police still had to prove that it was the conspirators who had stopped the train near Cabin A. Surely they couldn't have relied on Hindu karsevaks to stop the train exactly where they wanted so that Godhra Muslims could burn it.
To get around this, the police came up with two more new witnesses — both Muslims — who now confessed it was they who had pulled the chain that brought the train to a halt near Cabin A. The statements of these witnesses — Illias Mullah Hussain and Anwar Sattar Kalandar, part-time hawkers and part time truck drivers — were recorded on July 9 and July 26, 2002. Both said they were present at the station when the karsevaks beat up the tea vendors. After this fight, they said they were told by Salim Paanwala (a paan-seller at the station who has been absconding since the incident) and Razzak Kurkur that karsevaks had abducted a Muslim girl from the platform and they had to stop the train.
So both Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar, along with another vendor called Hussain Suleman Gijju (who, according to the police, is still absconding), scaled different coaches of the train and turned the discs and stopped the train. Both also named all the accused whom Ajay Baria had named in his statement, corroborating that they were armed with sticks, pipes and iron rods. Both said they had seen the parrot-coloured rickshaw parked near the coach.
However, they went a step ahead of Baria's statement and gave the registration number and name of the rickshaw owner. Both also claimed to have seen the nine vendors, whom Ajay Baria had alleged set coach S-6 on fire, near the coach carrying carboys and later running towards Signal Falia. At this point, they said, they also heard the nine hawkers saying, "The train is properly set on fire from inside."
Both Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar have since retracted their statements. In an interview with TEHELKA, the two narrated how they were illegally confined and tortured by Noel Parmar and his team. "Every night the cops would come and put a log of wood on my legs and then walk over it," said Illias. "I was given electric shocks on my genitals," said Kalandar. They were made to memorise a statement handed to them by the police. "The cops would come and ask us how much we had memorised from the hand written notes we were given," say Illias and Kalandar. After two weeks of confinement, both men were produced in court and their statements were recorded. Parmar then told both to leave Godhra and not be in touch with any local Muslims. After about a year and a half, Illias and Kalandar returned to Godhra and retracted their statements by filing affidavits before the Supreme Court.
TELL TALE: The police file the first supplementary chargesheet. There is a crucial slip
Armed with the statements of Ajay Baria, Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar, the police filed the first supplementary chargesheet on September 20, 2002. For the first time, they acknowledged the aborted abduction by karsevaks. In fact, the now alleged was one of the main conspirators — had used the abduction attempt as a ruse to gather a mob and make Illias, Kalandar and Suleman stop the train. Ajay Baria's statement had given the police the rest of their ammunition.
But the police made one serious mistake. Ajay Baria had said that nine Muslim hawkers had loaded carboys onto a rickshaw in his presence. He had also claimed that one of the hawkers had made him carry one carboy up to the rickshaw, which is when he claimed he smelt "kerosene". However, Baria had never mentioned the number of carboys, their size, or the quantity of "kerosene" each carboy may have had. Yet in their supplementary chargesheet, the police noted, without any evidence, that the vendors had loaded eight carboys, carrying 20 litres of petrol each. (Baria, of course, had used the word "kerosene", not "petrol".)
In effect, the police said the accused had carried 160 litres of petrol to the train. How had the police quantified the carboys and the liquid in it when neither Baria nor Illias nor Kalandar had given any numbers? Did the police already have a theory in place? Were they manufacturing fake evidence to prove that theory? Where had 160 litres of petrol — a huge quantity by any measure — come from? Where had the conspiracy been hatched? The first supplementary chargesheet did not have any answers for this.
THE MISSING LINK: A second supplementary chargesheet is filed
Between the first and second supplementary chargesheet filed on December 19, 2002, only one development took place: the arrest of Razzak Kurkur. Apart from this, the second supplementary chargesheet was a replica of the first, and the loopholes remained unanswered. The police still could not explain who had planned the conspiracy, where and how it was planned, and what exactly the plan was.
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| Ground Zero The horrific incident of Godhra has shadowed Gujarat for five years Photo: Cherian Thomas |
THE PLUG IN THE HOLE: Jabir Bin Yamin Bahera is arrested. He names Maulvi Umarji as the mastermind
To plug some of this, the police arrest Jabir Bin Yamin Bahera, a hawker at Godhra railway station who had been absconding, on January 22, 2003. Thirteen days after arresting him, the police produced him before the court and recorded his confession. This is what Bahera claimed. On the eve of February 26, 2002, that is the eve of the Godhra incident, he was sitting at a tea stall when three hawkers, Salim Paanwala among them, came up to him and said that Razzak Kurkur wanted to see him. When he reached Kurkur's house, Kurkur instructed him to buy petrol. Along with a few other Muslim hawkers, Bahera then went to Kalabhai's petrol pump and bought 140 litres of petrol in seven carboys, each carboy measuring 20 litres.
This was stored in Kurkur's house, located behind his shop-cumguesthouse at Signal Falia. After that, at about 11:30pm, Bahera says he was standing at Kurkur's shop when two people — Bilal Haji and Farukh Bhana, both corporators — came there. The corporators told him that they had just met "Maulvi Sahab" who had conveyed the message that the Sabarmati Express was coming and they were to burn coach S-6. After that Salim Paanwala went to the railway station to enquire if the train was running late. When he came back with the information that the train was running late by four hours, Bahera and the other hawkers went home and gathered again near Aman Guesthouse (Kurkur's shop) at 6am on the morning of February 27, 2002.
According to Bahera's confession, after watching TV for some time, at around 7:15am, Bahera came out of the shop and saw a hawker called Mahboob Latika running from the side of the station shouting, "Beating…beating." Bahera went near the Parcel Office and saw five other Muslim hawkers pelting stones at the train. After that Ajay Baria, along with the nine Muslim hawkers, went to Kurkur's house and loaded the petrol-filled carboys (he does not mention the number) in a tempo. Kurkur then told them to take the tempo near Cabin A. Kurkur and Salim Paanwala followed on an M-80 scooter, with Paanwala driving and Kurkur riding pillion, carrying a carboy in his hands.
On reaching Cabin A, they all went near coach S-2 first. There, Bahera says, he saw a few hawkers armed with sticks, pipes and dhariyas trying to break the doors and windows of the train. From coach S- 2, they proceeded to S-6. There, the hawkers had cut the vestibule between S-6 and S-7 with a scissor. Bahera and a few other vendors entered S-6 with five carboys and poured petrol along the floor of the coach. A few other hawkers sprinkled petrol from outside through the broken windows. When the passengers started running helter-skelter, Bahera and a few others looted a gold ring from a passenger who had jumped out of the burning coach. Bahera and his accomplices then ambushed a military personnel and hit him with a rod. Later, one of them escorted the military personnel to the road.
Through all this, the mob had continued to pelt stones at the train. A stray stone came and hit Bahera on his forehead. He rushed to a clinic in Godhra for first aid. The next day, he says, he came to know that after he had left the spot, a hawker called Hasan Lalu (a tea vendor who is in jail) threw a burning mashaal inside the coach, which then caught fire. According to Bahera, he visited Maulvi Hussain Umarji during the next few days. On his first visit, Umarji told him he was paying Rs 1,500 to all those who had been arrested, he did not pay Bahera any money though. On his second visit, Umarji told him to escape. Having done so, Bahera says he sold the ring he had robbed a few months later to a jeweler in Anand for Rs 2,000.
STITCHED UP: The conspiracy and the conspirators
Armed with Jabir Bahera's confession, the police now claimed to know the main conspirators (Maulvi Umarji, Bilal Haji, Farukh Bhana, Razzak Kurkur and Salim Paanwala); where the conspirators had gathered on the eve of the incident (at Razzak Kurkur's shop); where the petrol was bought from (Kalabhai's petrol pump); and where the petrol was stored (at Razzak Kurkur's house behind his shop). But most importantly, the police had now linked the conspiracy to the most significant Muslim religious figure in Godhra — Maulvi Umarji.
Umarji is one of the most respected maulvis of Godhra. During the communal riots in 1965, '69, '80 and '89, Umarji had been a member of the peace committees formed by the district administration. After the Sabarmati incident, he ran a relief camp for riot victims for several months in Godhra. He had also taken delegations to meet dignitaries like Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former Prime Minister Deve Gowda, and the then Defence Minister George Fernandes during their visits to Godhra after the incident. On April 4, 2002, when Prime Minister AB Vajpayee visited Godhra, accompanied by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, Maulvi Umarji gave him a memorandum. However, he snubbed Modi by refusing to hand him a copy of the memorandum.
With Kalota, the municipal council president, vice president, a couple of Muslim corporators and advocates already in jail, the Muslim political leadership in Godhra was already in the dock. With Umarji being named one of the prime conspirators, the entire Muslim community of Godhra was indicted. The police were now in a position to claim that the Sabarmati incident was not a spontaneous act of rioting but a cold-blooded, premeditated act of communal violence, with respectable Muslims from Godhra at the centre of the conspiracy.
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| Action-reaction? Narendra Modi claimed the massacre of Muslims was a spontaneous response to the gory deaths in Godhra Photo: Reuters |
FRESH FUEL: Fake witnesses produced to prove the source of petrol
Prabhatsingh Patel and Ranjitsingh Patel were two salesmen employed at Kalabhai's petrol pump at the time of the Godhra incident. On April 10, 2002, just a month after the incident, the two had told the police that they were at work since 6:00pm on February 26, 2002 up till 9:00am on February 27, 2002 and had not sold any loose petrol to anybody during that period.
The police now approached the two again on February 23, 2003. In a disturbing turnaround, the two now claimed that they had sold 140 litres of petrol to six Muslims, including Razzak Kurkur and Salim Paanwala. They said Siraj Lala, Salim Paanwala, Jabir Binyamin Bahera, Salim Zarda and Shaukat Babu had come in a parrotcoloured tempo while Razzak Kurkur had come ahead on an M-80 scooter.
THE SEE-SAW TRAIL: More confessions, more chargesheets, more retractions
Armed with Jabir Binyamin Bahera's confession and the statements of the two petrol pump salesmen, the police filed a third supplementary chargesheet on April 16, 2003.
Later, they also obtained confessions from six other accused — Shaukat Bhano, Salim Zarda, Irfan Patalia, Mehboob Latika, Shaukat Bibina and Shakir Babu (all Muslim hawkers). These confessions were recorded between 2003 and 2006 but never included in the chargesheets. (The police have filed 17 chargesheets till date — one main and 16 supplementary.) All six hawkers have since retracted their confessions.
The police also took a statement from Sikandar Mohammad Siddik, a Muslim boy who was living with his family along the tracks at the time of the Godhra incident. Siddik has since migrated to Surat.
Siddik's statement mirrored the names of the accused and the sequence of events as stated in Jabir Binyamin Bahera's confession. He also claimed that Maulvi Umarji had told him he was paying Rs 1,500 to all those accused who had set the train on fire. However, Siddik also named one more religious leader not mentioned by anyone. According to him, Maulvi Yakub Punjabi had been shouting provocative slogans from the rooftop of a masjid when the train halted near Cabin A. Surprisingly, the police have not made Yakub Punjabi an accused.
On enquiry, TEHELKA found that Punjabi was not in the country at the time of Godhra incident, a fact attested by his passport and visa. After Siddik's statement, the police had apparently picked up Yakub Punjabi, but realising the blunder they released him immediately.
THE CRUCIAL QS: The gaping loopholes in the police's case
The scheduled time of arrival of the Sabarmati Express taking karsevaks to Ayodhya was 12 midnight; and the scheduled time for the one returning from Ayodhya was 2.55am. A similar train carrying karsevaks to Ayodhya had reached Godhra on the night of February 25, just a day before the fateful incident. Why didn't the conspirators attack this train — 12 at night being a more ideal time for carrying out a crime than 8 in the morning?
If the conspirators were really bent on attacking the Sabarmati Express only on February 27 what was the original plan, considering the train was scheduled to arrive at 2:55am in the morning?
Since the police claim that the plan to burn coach S-6 coach was already in place on the evening of February 26, and its execution was left to just a handful of hawkers, what would the so-called conspirators have done if the karsevaks had not beaten up Muslim hawkers on the platform and tried to abduct a Muslim girl? How would the hawkers have gathered a mob? Did the execution of the conspiracy hinge (illogically) on the karsevaks behaving provocatively?
According to the police, Jabir Binyamin Bahera was one of the key people to buy and store the petrol, take it to Cabin A, and then enter coach S-6 and pour petrol along the floor. Why then was he only roped in at the last minute for executing the conspiracy?
The police claim that Ajay Baria was forcibly taken along by the Muslim hawkers, first to collect petrol from Razzak Kurkur's house, then to Cabin A where they finally set the coach on fire. Since the Muslim hawkers were already large in number — Baria has named nine — why did they need Baria? Why would Muslim conspirators take a Hindu tea vendor, against his wish, to execute their
Why was Maulvi Umarji only interested in burning coach S-6, as the police claim, when the entire train was full of karsevaks?
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| The dead Burnt bodies recovered from the S-6 coach Photo: Daxesh |
Since the police claim that half a dozen vendors had entered the coach after cutting the vestibule, how is it that no coach S-6 survivor — karsevak or ordinary passenger — saw them?
Can a vestibule, whose average thickness is 6 inches, be cut so easily by a plain scissor or knife?
The Sabarmati Express was originally scheduled to arrive at Godhra railway station at 2.55 am. Did Pathak, Mulchandani and the other BJP members plan to greet the VHP leaders and karsevaks with tea and biscuits at the unlikely hour in the morning, or did they make their plan only after they came to know that the train was running late? Further, Pathak, Mulchandani and the others claim to have been present at the railway station from 6:30am till the train was set on fire. Yet none of them mention the altercation between the karsevaks and Muslim vendors or the aborted abduction of the Muslim girl. How is it that such major incidents escaped their eyes?
More perplexingly, Pathak, Mulchandani and the others must have been very close to the mob to be able to identify people from it as they have done. If the mob was armed as they have claimed, why did the mob spare Pathak and the rest, when the same mob was not forgiving of the army man or a few others whom they had attacked and injured after they had escaped from coach S-6?
Between them, Pathak, Mulchandani and the seven other BJP men have identified as many as 41 Muslims. Yet not one of these names overlap. All these nine so-called witnesses were standing together at the station, and all nine claim to have identified culprits while standing at the same spot — behind cabin A — yet all saw completely different people. Was this a meticulous division of labour or sheer coincidence?
In their first supplementary chargesheet, the police had claimed that the culprits cut the vestibule to gain entry into the coach. But Pathak, Mulchandani and the others don't say this at all. On the contrary, they claim they saw the culprits sprinkling some inflammable liquid on the coach from outside before setting it on fire — a claim that falls flat in the light of the forensic evidence. Since the Gujarat government's own forensic laboratory has stated that the fire started from inside and there is no evidence that any inflammable liquid was sprinkled on the coach from outside, are Pathak, Mulchandani and the others simply lying? Are their statements manufactured to settle personal scores and further political agendas?
The two petrol pump salesmen, Prabhatsingh Patel and Ranjitsingh Patel, had first denied selling any loose petrol either on the day of the incident or the previous evening. What transpired to make them do an about-turn more than a year after the incident and claim that they had actually sold 140 litres of petrol to the accused?
Apart from all the other contradictions and omissions, the police's case has been severely weakened by the retractions of seven of the accused, including Jabir Binyamin Bahera. Add to this the fact that Illias Hussain and Anwar Kalandar — the two who had confessed to stopping the train at Cabin A — have also retracted their statements and say they were tortured into confessing, and the police are left with very little leg to stand on. The only witnesses the police have are Ajay Baria — the inexplicable Hindu link in the plot; Sikandar Siddik — who incorrectly named Yakub Punjabi; the two petrol pump men, Prabhatsingh Patel and Ranjitsingh Patel (both of whom live under constant police protection); and eight BJP members (Dileep Dasadiya has since retracted).
THE TRUTH EXPOSED: Tehelka's painstaking investigation over six months demolishes four of the police's key witnesses
Over a period of six months, TEHELKA's undercover reporter infiltrated VHP, RSS and BJP circles deep inside Gujarat. Most of the time, the reporter posed as a RSS man writing a book on Hindutva. At other times, he posed as a Delhi University research scholar sympathetic to the RSS, writing a thesis on the resurgence of Hindutva in Gujarat. After meeting several Sangh Parivar and BJP leaders in Ahmedabad, a BJP leader in-charge of Panchmahal district (Godhra falls in Panchmahal) introduced the reporter to Kakul Pathak, one of the nine BJP Godhra witnesses. After meeting Pathak twice and tutoring himself on the internal politics of the BJP in Godhra, the reporter made a cold call on Murli Mulchandani, (also one of the nine BJPwitnesses) posing as an RSS man travelling across Gujarat to assess the mood of the electorate.
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| The Burning train The inside view of the burnt S-6 coach |
The truth about Kakul Pathak
The TEHELKA reporter met Kakul Pathak twice, first on May 29, 2007 and the second time on July 17, 2007. In the first meeting Pathak discussed the state of the BJP in Godhra and his own contribution to the party. He also named a few BJP MLAs and ministers who he said had backed the Hindu rioters post -Godhra.
In the second meeting, Pathak laid bare the horrible truth about how he and other eight BJP members had colluded with the police to indict innocent Muslims. Contrary to their statements, Pathak said neither he nor the other eight BJP men were on the spot when the coach was set on fire. The truth is by the time Pathak reached the spot the mob had dispersed. The truth is that Pathak did not even know that the police had attributed a statement to his name and made him a witness, but when he did come to know about his statement, he backed the police to the hilt. Joining ranks with the police, Pathak identified two people in the police parade who had been named as culprits in his statement.
He knew the two were not involved in the crime, but he still damned them as he thought it was his duty towards the "Hindu Samaj". "Yeh hindutva ka kaam hai… jo party bolegi woh karne ka hai," Pathak told TEHELKA. (This is the work of Hindutva… We must do whatever the party commands). Pathak has since stood his ground, except on one count. A man called Ismail Chunga had been named by the police as a culprit in his statement. Pathak later claimed it was Ismail Chungi, not Chunga. He did this to save Chunga, who happened to be his business partner. "How can I fix my own partner?" Pathak says.
In all, six people were named as culprits in Pathak's statement. Three are still absconding, one was bailed out within a few months, and two have been in judicial custody for the last three years. The two in custody are advocate Rol Amin Hussain Hathila and Usman Abdulgani Coffeewala, an alleged pickpocket.
The truth about Murli Mulchandani
In another shocking disclosure, Murli Mulchandani, currently vice-president of the Godhra Municipal Council, told the TEHELKA reporter that he was actually sleeping at home at the time of the incident. Much like Pathak though, he readily cooperated with the police and did not blink an eye when his name was included among the eyewitnesses.
Mulchandani, in fact, was livid with Dilip Dasadiya for retracting his statement, and upset with Pathak and Raju Darji for making minor changes in the names of two of the accused. He was miffed that despite their indiscipline, the BJP had given party responsibilities to Dasadiya and Darji. He said such things sometimes made him lose his faith in the party, but he would stick to his word since he cannot betray Hinduism.
The truth about Ranjitsingh Patel and Prabhatsingh Patel, the petrol pump salesmen
Ranjitsingh Patel and Prabhatsingh Patel — the petrol pump employees who, in a complete volteface, claimed they sold 140 litres of petrol to the accused — now live under round-theclock police vigil. They quit their petrol pump jobs after their police statements and are living in their village, Saapa Sigwa, about six miles away from Godhra town. When the TEHELKA reporter tried to meet Prabhatsingh, his family denied him access.
However, TEHELKA was fortunate enough to get to the other witness, Ranjitsingh Patel. When the reporter posing as a Bajrang Dal man approached Ranjitsingh on July 16, 2007, the latter was tilling a field and the two policemen who shadow him 24/7 had gone for a tea break. After some initial apprehension, Ranjitsingh told the reporter that he was paid Rs 50,000 by Noel Parmar. The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. One of the prime witnesses, on whom the entire police case rests, confessed that the chief investigating officer had bribed him. He said a similar amount was also paid to his colleague, Prabhatsingh. He also said that Parmar had told him that when the time came to identify the accused in the court, he would show the accused to Ranjitsingh in advance and on the sly so that he could remember their faces and pin them down in court.
The truth about Ajay Baria
TEHELKA tried to reach Ajay Baria, the Hindu tea vendor who has been made a police witness, but failed to track him down. Kakul Pathak told TEHELKA that Baria lives under the close supervision of Noel Parmar. Pathak says the last he had heard of him, Baria was selling tea near Parmar's office in Vadodara. TEHELKA then decided to meet his mother who is a daily wage labourer and lives in Godhra. Baria's mother said her son had become a police witness out of fear. She said Ajay was at home and fast asleep at the time of the incident at Godhra station. She also said that the police do not allow Baria to visit her or come to Godhra too often. Every time Baria came home from Vadodara to visit her, two policemen, she said, accompany him.
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