Human Rights -Kingshuk Nag 23 February 2011

[Constancio Rodrigues]

I did not believe in 2002 that there was an organised conspiracy that
led to the Godhra train burning and nine years later in 2011 my belief
remains the same. Notwithstanding the judgment delivered by the trial
court.

Well, it was always not like this. For the first month after the
February 27, 2002, carnage, I believed like most others that coach S6
of Sabarmati Express had been deliberately put on fire. But at that
time I had not visited Godhra. I went to Godhra at the end of March
2002 and ran into the deputy superintendent of police Bava, who was
investigating the case and his boss inspector general of police Agja.
Both were at the police post adjacent to the platform of Godhra
station when we ran into them. (I say we because with me was our then
bureau chief in Vadodara and now editor of Chandigarh edition, Raja
Bose). I asked the duo how far they had proceeded in unravelling the
conspiracy. The cops said that if there was a conspiracy they were yet
to come across any evidence. I could not believe what they were saying
but managed to keep a straight face. "If there was no evidence how did
the coach get burnt?" I asked. Mr Agja said that he was not sure but
added that at any time there were 20-30 vendors on the platform
hawking their wares like tea. Most of them carried small-sized gas
cylinders with burners with them. In the midst of a fracas that had
broken out between the kar sevaks and these vendors things could have
turned ugly with some vendors throwing in burning rags inside the
train. This could have caused a fire, Agja concluded but emphasized
that this was a possibility but not his definitive account of what had
happened. I asked the inspector general whether he could be quoted by
name on what he had said: "Yes," he said and became emotional and said
that he had merely a year and a half of service and at this stage he
cared for nothing other than the truth. He looked at Bava and said:
"He has only a month left, why should he bothered either?"



Before running the story I checked Agja's story with many top police
officers. They agreed with the argument and said that the belief in
the top police echelon was also this. Curiously when the story was
front-paged in TOI, in all its editions, the reaction was muted. Late
in the afternoon, a distressed Agja called me and said: "Nag sahib,
yeh kya kar diya apney?" I said I had checked with him and asked him
to cool down. Later in the evening an apologetic public relations
officer of the police department called me. "Everyone knows what you
wrote is correct, but yet Mr Agja wants us to issue a clarification.
You are free to do whatever you want to. When the clarification
arrived I found it wishy-washy and threw it into the dustbin. Later I
came to know that Narendra Modi had summoned Agja who told him that he
had not said anything. This was recounted to me by none other than Mr
Modi and when I told him that in fact Agja had said so, the Gujarat
chief minister kept quiet. A little later Agja was transferred.

It appeared to me that thereafter there was an effort by the police
to quickly fit the conspiracy angle. In their zealousness, the cops
started recording all sorts of evidence including that of purported
eyewitnesses. One such eyewitness was found to be present at a school
where he taught some 25 km away from Godhra! Random arrests were made
from Singal Falia, the area located next to the Godhra railway
station, whose main inhabitants were Ghanchi Muslims (many of them
poor). Ultimately this was to spoil the police case because my belief
is that this zealousness to fit evidence to a pre-decided theory, all
sorts of dubious evidence was collected. The police investigation at
this stage was to influence the future of the case. Thus when a
Special Investigation Team (SIT) was put in place to supersede the
earlier Gujarat police probe, this went further using information
gathered by the previous investigations. The investigating officer (of
the rank of DSP) also continued to be the same.


The end result is there for everybody to see: the judge says that
there was a conspiracy behind the burning of the train but lets off
the main conspirator, Umarji. Well, if you ask me here is where the
conspiracy angle is knocked out straight away. Interestingly the case
is proven on the testimony of some of the accused who later retracted
their statements. Little surprise that the judge upholding the
conspiracy angle has let off most of those arraigned before his court
of law.


I am aware that many of the readers of this blog post will heap many
accusations on me: of being a pseudo-secularist and going out of the
way and appeasing the minorities. Of being anti-Hindu and not being
sympathetic to the families of all those who perished. My submission
to them: Don't treat Godhra like the Ramajanmabhoomi issue as a matter
of faith. Truth is often stranger than fiction. It is the merely the
trial court that has delivered its judgment. There are two more levels
of courts that the verdict will have to pass through. The last word
has not been heard on Godhra.