Attack on train not communal violence: Gujarat Home Minister
Gujarat Minister of State
for Home Gordhan Zadafiya tonight said the attack on Sabarmati Express appeared to be pre-planned and about 40 people were
rounded up in connection with the incident.
Zadafiya, who visited the spot along with Chief Minister Narendra Modi, said the incident cannot be called communal violence because there was no retaliation. "It was pre-planned and seemed to be an organised crime."
He said barring sporadic incidents of violence in some parts of the state, the situation was "calm though tense."
Dazed survirors rendered speechless by attack
Ahmedabad railway station was chock-a-block with people when the ill-fated Sabarmati Express puffed its way to platform number one this evening after the attack by a mob in Godhra.
Heavy police bandobast was maintained at the station, where the train with only 16 coaches reached at about 4.45 pm, amidst chaotic scenes. Anxious relatives had thronged the railway station hours
before the train actually arrived.
Two coaches of the train were detached at Godhra railway station after they were reduced to a mangled state by the fire set off by miscreants. There were clusters of stones in almost all the remaining 16 coaches that made it to Ahmedabad in surcharged atmosphere. Windowpanes of almost all the coaches
that reached here were damaged in the stone throwing by the violent mob at Godhra.
Grieving relatives with sodden faces, made wet by weeping eyes threw themselves in embrace when their dazed kith and kin, many of them injured and bandaged, alighted from the train.
Inflammatory speeches were made against the minority community by the worked up 'Kar Sevaks'.
VHP calls for 'Bandh'
The VHP called a 'Gujarat Bandh' on Friday in protest against the killing of 'Ram Sewaks' at Godhra today even as it sought to put the blame for the incident on local residents, the Station Master and three police personnel belonging to the minority community.
While announcing the 'Bandh' and alleging police inaction, the Sangh Parivar outfit, however, shied away from attacking the BJP Government in the state. It also announced that VHP units across the country would organise 'Shradhanjali Sabhas' (condolence meetings) for the 'martyrs' from March one to three.
At least 57 people, including 25 women and 15 children, were today killed and 43 injured when an angry mob set afire four coaches of a train carrying mostly Ram Sevaks from Aydohya sparking off communal violence in some parts of the state which left two more persons dead.
Indefinite curfew was clamped and shoot-at-sight ordered as large-scale violence erupted immediately after the attack on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra town. Police fired five rounds to contain the rioting mobs in the town.
Of the injured--31 men, nine women and three children--20 sustained serious burns, a senior police official said, adding only six bodies have been identified so far. Several bodies were charred beyond recognition. As the train from Faizabad arrived at Godhra railway station around 8.30 A.M., some "Ram Sevaks" travelling in it and some locals on the platform indulged in slogan-shouting.
Immediately after the train left for its onward journey, it was stopped by chain-pulling near the signal point where a mob attacked four coaches with petrol and acid bombs setting them on fire, the official said. Some passengers were trapped inside the blazing coaches and burnt to death, he said.
The attack on the train triggered off arson and violence in Ahmedabad, Baroda and Anand. As violence spread to some parts of the state, the state government deployed Rapid Action Force personnel in Ahmedabad and other sensitive areas while the Centre rushed CRPF men to assist the local authorities to maintain law and order.
In Ahmedabad, a bus was set on fire by a mob in Bapunagar while some passengers of a particular community were injured in an attack by a group of people, police said. One person was stabbed to death and four were injured at Baroda railway station this afternoon when some people got off the train and attacked them with knives in the waiting room, railway police said. Another person was stabbed to death at Anand railway station, police said.
The Centre sounded a country-wide alert in the wake of the Godhra incident and asked the states to take strict measures to maintain peace. A concerned Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee appealed to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to postpone its agitation on the temple construction issue but the Sangh Parivar outfit promtply rejected it saying it had no authority to do so and was determined to go ahead with the construction plan. VHP has called for a Gujarat bandh tomorrow to protest the Godhra attack.
Mahant Devendradasji, head priest of temple in Ahmedabad, who was in the train, recounting the horrific scenes, said "when the train reached Godhra in the morning, a few people began stoning the train without any provocation. As a reaction, people inside the coaches downed shutters."
He said the people were quite oblivious to what lay in store for them. The train was stopped a few yards away from the station and the coaches carrying "Ram Sevaks" set afire. "We did not know that they had doused the coaches with kerosene and had set them ablaze," he added.
The Mahant said the attackers numbered over 2,000. When asked how many people he thought would have died in the attack, he said it was difficult because the bodies were charred beyond recognition. He said he himself saw at least 20 charred bodies.
M Bhatia, Ahmedabad district coordinator of VHP who was travelling by the train, told PTI in Godhra that it was a "pre-planned" attack. He said as the train left the station, a group of people stoned it. Panic-stricken passengers promptly bolted the doors and pulled down window-shutters. The attackers hurled petrol bombs on four coaches of the train and set them on fire. Witnesses said 36 bodies were charred beyond recognition.
