NEW DELHI, Jan 17: An official inquiry into the "Godhra train fire" of February 2002, which became a pretext for large-scale killing of Muslims in Gujarat, has found it was caused by an accident and not by any terrorist act
, the Indian government said on Monday.
Indian Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav had ordered the One Man High Level Committee, headed by Justice U.C. Banerjee, a retired judge of the Supreme Court, to inquire into the fire in the coach "S-6" of the Sabarmati Express. More than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed by pro-Hindutva mobs in the aftermath of the tragedy.
"There was a preponderance of evidence that the fire in coach No. S-6 originated in the coach itself without any external input." Moreover, the possibility of an inflammable liquid having been used is completely ruled out as there was first a smell of burning, followed by dense smoke and flames thereafter, the report said.
It said that this sequence was not possible had the fire been caused by inflammable liquid thrown on the floor of the coach or an inflammable object thrown from outside the coach.
"The 'inflammable liquid theory' also gets negated by the statement of some of the passengers who suffered injuries on the upper portion of the body and not the lower body and who crawled towards the door on elbows and could get out without much injury," the report said.
The report was released on the eve of three state polls in Bihar, Jharkhand and Haryana, where the ruling Congress party led alliance is pitted against the allies of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
In a claim, the report said that the Banerjee had found it unbelievable that Hindutva activists who made up 90 per cent of the total occupants of the coach and were armed with 'Trishuls', "would allow to get themselves burnt without a murmur by miscreant activity like a person entering S-6 coach from outside and setting the coach on fire."
