NEW DELHI, March 3: A judicial panel probing a 2002 train fire blamed for sparking the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat said the blaze was an accident, rejecting claims by right wing Hindus that it was deliberately set.

Authorities initially blamed a Muslim mob for the torching of the train in the town of Godhra that claimed the lives of 59 Hindus.

The blaze sparked an orgy of violence in Gujarat in which 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, died.

Retired Supreme Court judge U.C. Banerjee said in his final report to Indian Railways that his four-member panel had concluded that it was an accident after probing all possible causes of the fire.

“The cause of the fire in the S-6 carriage on Feb 22, 2002, carrying kar sevaks (Hindu pilgrims), was accidental and not deliberate,” Mr Banerjee said.

The victims were returning from the temple town of Ayodhya, in Uttar Pradesh state, when two carriages of their train caught fire just after leaving Godhra station.

“My definite conclusion is that the fire is not by reason of any deliberately inflicted fire but accidental,” he told reporters, adding that circumstantial evidence pointed to the same conclusions.

“There was no conspiracy whatsoever because the Gujarat police didn’t know when they (pilgrims) were coming back,” he said.

He was referring to charges by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was in power in Gujarat at the time of the massacre and which still governs the state, that the Muslim crowd ambushed the train and set it on fire.

“If the police intelligence had failed then I don’t expect that other private agencies would have a better intelligence system,” the judge said.

“The additional police director-general of Gujarat had said there wasn’t a scrap of paper in his department to prove there was any conspiracy,” he said.

The ruling Congress party, which ousted the BJP in 2004 general Election, said the report vindicated its stand that the riots had been engineered by Hindu extremists to polarise Hindus and Muslims.

“Here’s a report says there was an accident and so why doesn’t the BJP analyse the report and come to certain conclusions in terms of public opinion?” senior Congress leader Salman Khursheed said.

“They (the BJP) simply reject the report because it does not fit their scheme of things,” Mr Khursheed said.

The Gujarat police said the train fire was sabotage aimed at fanning religious violence and have arrested 104 under an anti-terrorism law in connection with the blaze. —AFP