The Hindu : POTA applied against all 121 Godhra accused

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 20, 2003

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POTA applied against all 121 Godhra accused

By Manas Dasgupta

GANDHINAGAR FEB.19. The Gujarat Government has applied the Prevention of Terrorist Act (POTA) against all the 121 accused arrested in connection with the Godhra train carnage alleging that it was a "pre-planned conspiracy'' of local Muslims.

Reconstructing the events leading to the burning of the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express on February 27 last year, based on the "confessional statements'' made by various accused, a State Government spokesman said the "conspiracy'' was hatched by some 20 to 25 persons a few days earlier to the incident and was carried out "under instructions'' from Moulana Hussain Umaraji, moulvi of the local mosque, who was arrested last week.

The spokesman claimed that the night before the incident, a meeting was held at Aman guesthouse in Signal Falia locality in Godhra in which the Moulana "issued" clear instructions to Haji Bilal and Farookh Bhana to set fire to coach number S-6 in which a large number of "Ram Sevaks'' were travelling.

The owner of the guesthouse, Abdul Razak Kurkur, and his associates were instructed to collect petrol and, accordingly, they collected 140 litres of petrol the same night from a nearby pump and kept these in cans in the guesthouse. Salim Badam alias Panwala was asked to monitor the movement of the train at the Godhra railway station and on his information at 1.30 a.m. that the train was running more than four hours behind schedule, "the conspirators decided to meet against at the Aman guesthouse at 6 a.m," the spokesman said.

On the arrival of the train on the platform, Salim Badam and others created a ruckus. They jumped into different compartments and pulled the chain to stop the train as it was about to leave the platform to give time to the conspirators to bring petrol from the guesthouse to a spot near the "A'' cabin.

Salim's associates also indulged in heavy stone throwing on the coaches to prevent the passengers from coming out of the compartments.

The train was halted again when it reached near the "A'' cabin in Signal Falia locality and some of the conspirators broke open the S-6 coach back entrance between two compartments through which they entered the coach forcibly and poured the petrol while keeping the four main doors tightly shut.

The other members of the "core group'' waiting outside the coach threw in burning rags through the broken windows and set the entire coach afire. Further "instigations'' to the violent crowd came from the local mosque, where slogans such as "Pakistan zindabad,'' "Hindustan murdabad,'' "Burn alive the kafirs'' and "Islam is in danger'' were raised over the public address system. Stoning of the coaches also continued simultaneously to ensure that the passengers from other coaches could not come to the rescue of the people in the burning coach while another group took position to prevent fire brigade personnel from reaching the spot in time.

The spokesman said that one of the accused, Zabir Behra, who named the Moulana as the main conspirator, had also confessed to the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Godhra, that the Moulana told all the accused not to surrender and those arrested not to divulge any information. He had also managed funds to secure bails for the accused. Behra was arrested from his residence in Signal Falia on January 22 this year.

The spokesman claimed that the Moulana had also made a signed confession of the entire conspiracy and had admitted to having received funds from various countries to carry out the operation.

The Preventive of Terrorist Ordinance was earlier also applied against the Godhra accused but the Government then had to withdraw it due to "technical faults.''

The ordinance was later replaced by an act of Parliament.

The State Government must have been worried that eight of the 131 accused earlier arrested had secured bail from the local or the Gujarat High Court on various grounds. The application of the POTA apparently is to prevent any further granting of bail in the conspiracy case that rocked Gujarat and in its aftermath, widespread riots took a toll of over 1,000 people last year.

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