Fabricating Systematic Lies – FSL Report

Fabricating Systematic Lies

(Mukul Sinha, Jan Sangharsh Manch)

When the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express had reduced to ashes near the Godhra railway station on 27^th February, 2002, few had imagined that this event would forever change the politics of this country. Use of communal politics is not alien to the political culture of this country but never before has the slogan for “the destruction of the minorities” fetched so many wining votes in a general election as it did in the Gujarat Assembly election of Decemebr, 2002!

Hatred has always been a powerful tool so far as social engineering is concerned. Strangely, on the same date, i.e. 27^th February (1933), Adolf Hitler’s men had burnt down the Reichstag in Germany and put the blame on the communist for doing so. Thousands of communists were butchered thereafter paving the way for the fascist rule of the Nazis.

The burning of the S6 coach on 27^th February was used similarly by Shri Narendra Modi. He had made the following press statement on the same day which was published all over Gujarat:

“The abominable event that has occurred in Godhra does not befit any civilized society, is not a communal event but is an one sided collective terrorist attack by one community ….. He further said that this incident is not a simple incident of violence or communal event but is a preplanned incident….”

Thus by announcing the event to be a “preplanned terrorist attack by one community against another”, the Chief Minister had set the stage for a reprisal attack against the Muslims as a revenge for the “preplanned terrorist attack by the Muslims” at Godhra! The statement of Modi also set the line of investigation- the charge of a preplanned Islamic terrorist conspiracy had to be brought home irrespective of what the real truth was.

Thus started the fabrication of the systematic lies.

How would a conspirator burn down a railway coach to burn to death 59 Hindu Karsevaks and terrorize the entire majority community? Without any inflammable fluid being used by the “conspirators’, the terrorist conspiracy theory would not have any takers. Would a conspiracy and least of all, a terrorist conspiracy under POTA make any sense, if there was no allegation of the conspirators acquiring some highly inflammable fluid to set fire to the S6 coach?? But the question at that the first instance was whether to allege the use of petrol or settle for the poor man’s fuel, the Kerosene!

The first panchnama of objects lying outside the coach was made on 27.2.2002 between 13.00 hrs and 15 hrs. It was recorded that there were certain cement sleepers lying about fifty feet east of the electric post No. 468/36, which in turn, was in the north of the electric post No. 468/35. On these cement sleeper, there were one white and two black carboys of ten liter capacity. No liquid was found but smell of some fluid was coming out of the carboys. These carboys were sealed and sent for forensic examination. 15 parcels were collected of different objects for examination.

The next panchnama of the things lying inside the coach S6 was recorded on 28.2.2002 between 17.45 hrs to 19.35 hrs. The burnt residues from nine cubicles of S6, plus from the toilets were collected, sealed in plastic bags and sent for forensic examination. Between the recording of the first and second panchnamas, 28 hours had passed and the coach remained unsealed and any number of persons were allowed to enter the coach, Shri Narendra Modi alongwith his cohorts had also been inside the coach on 27^th around 5.30pm.

The first FSL report of the analysis of the materials sent from outside as well as inside the coaches, covered by the above two panchnamas were given by a single report No. FSL/EE/2002/c/287 dated 20.3.2002 . This report of FSL prepared by D.B.Talati, Assistant Director of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) Ahmedabad, claimed the presence of residual petrol hydrocarbons in 25 samples. The other 20 samples did not disclose the presence of any hydrocarbons.

The reliability of the report of the latter 16 samples is very doubtful since hundreds of onlookers and visitors including the Chief Minister/other ministers had visited the site as well as entered the S6 coach and therefore any material taken from inside the coach or outside on 28.2.2002 could be tampered and/or planted material.

Despite this FSL report dated 20.3.2002, being with the Investigation Officer, the first charge-sheet filed on 22.5.2002, did not make any specific allegation of the S6 being burnt by the use of petrol. Shri K.C.Bawa.

Initially, the papers and statements of witnesses which formed the part of the first charge-sheet dated 22.5.2002, suggested the use of Kerosene as the fuel that was used by the “conspirators” to burn down the S6 coach. Shri Talati in the report dated 26.4.02, had found the presence of kerosene in three carboys which were apparently discovered at the instance of one Shri Haji Bilal who was projected as the main conspirator in the beginning.

Even their star “eye witness” Shri Ajaykumar kanubhai Bariya, who for the first time narrated the absurd story of accused entering S6 by cutting through the vestibule between S6 and S7 coach in his statement u/s 164 on 9.7.2002, did not allege that petrol was used to burn the S6 coach. This is what he said, “…after sometime I saw Rafique Bhatuk come with the carbo and give it to Irfan bhopa and he told me , ‘put this carbo in the rickshaw’. I kept that carbo in the rickshaw as I was very scared. The smell like kerosene was coming out from the carbo…” The Kerosene theory prevailed for sometime till beginning of July, 2002 but the new I.O. Noel Parmar had more refined ideas and fuel in mind.

The primary motivation for the introduction of “Petrol” as the conspirators’ fuel and the burning of S6 coach from inside was the mischievous report of Dr. M.S.Dahiya dated 17.5.2002, opining that the S6 coach could not be burned from outside but 60 liters of petrol would be required to be poured inside the coach to the burn the same.

Thus after a period of one year, petrol is rediscovered and the Kerosene given up. But the problem lies precisely in this switch over from Kerosene to petrol on one hand and from the burning of the coach from outside to the burning of the coach by pouring petrol from inside!

The entire “Petrol” theory hinges on Binayim Behras’s “confession” u/s 164 dated 5.2.2003 to the effect that at about 9pm on 26th February, 2002, Razak Kurkure had asked him to accompany him to bring petrol from the petrol pump of kalabhai. Binayamin had gone there with few others in a popti colored tempi with seven carboys of 20 liters each which were filled up at the pump and brought back and kept in Razak Kurkures romm which was behind the Aman Guest house. ..this petrol was used on 27th February to set fire to S6 coach! But the petrol theory has absolutely no evidence to support it.

Firstly, two petrol pumps near the Godhra station were sealed by the police on 27th Feb. 2002. The first pump was owned by M.H. & A Patel on Vejalpur road and the other was owned by Asgarali qurban Hussein (Kalabhai). Petrol was seized from Kalabhai’s petrol pump and analysed. In his report, FSL/EE/2002/c/442, dated 26.4.2002, Shri D.B.Talati, Assistant Director, FSL, stated that he could not however give a clear opinion whether the petrol detected in some samples in and around S6 as per the FSL report dated 20.3.2002 and the petrol detected in the samples from Kalabhai’s petrol pump were from the same or not!

Secondly, a huge amount of material ( 370 kilos) from inside the S6 coach was once again collected on 1.5.2002 and sent for Forensic examination. The FSL report No. 2002/c/594 dated 17.5.2002 however failed to report any detection of petrol from the burnt residues of the things inside the coach.

The fatal blow to the “Petrol theory” came from the two employees of Kalabhai’s petrol pump, namely Shri Prabhatsinh G Patel and Ranjitsinh G Patel who in their statement recorded u/s 162 on 10. 4.02, flatly denied having sold any loose petrol to any body and in fact stated that they did not sell loose petrol from their pump. After almost a year later they were however coerced to change their statement!

Lastly, Shri Binyamin Behra also retracted his statement and declared that his earlier statement was taken under third degree method.

Thus there was absolutely no evidence on record to even prima facie establish the presence of petrol in the remains of the S6 coach except the unreliable report of Talati dated 20.3.2002 claiming the detection of residual petrol! We shall deal with the absurdity of this finding a little later.

Interestingly, the report of FSL dated 20.3.2002, prepared by D.B.Talati, Assistant Director of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) Ahmedabad, detected petrol in two of the three carboys found from the cement sleepers near the post no. 468/36, one of them being a white carboy with a white stopper bearing the inscriptions, “fortune” in English whereas the other was a black carboy. Mr. Talati however did not bother to find out whether the source of petrol found in the two carbpoys were same as the sourse of the petrol with which the Karsevaks had burnt down the Malla’s Garage and the trucks near it around 11 am which were just near the post No. 468/36!

The Malla’s Garage across the railway tracks near the post No. 468/36, with the trucks burnt down by the Karsevaks around 11 am on 27^th February, 2002.

Reverting back to the FSL report dated 20.3.2002 prepared by Shri D.B.Talati, claiming the detection of residual petrol, Jan Sangharsh Manch had requested the Nanavati Commission to re-summon him for further cross examination on his report. Shri Talati was specifically asked what he meant by residual petrol and how did he detect the same.

Shri Talati had informed the Commission that he had performed the Gas-liquid chromatography for the detection of residual petrol which he defined as the remains of perol after it is burnt. He also filed an Affidavit explaining the difference of unburnt petrol and burnt petrol and he stated that in the burnt petrol the more volatile component of petrol gets evaporated more faster than the less volatile ones and therefore the ratio of the higher to lower volatile components of the unburnt petrol would be more than the same ratio in the burnt petrol. Theoretically, Shri Talati was right.

In practice however, Shri Talati admitted that he had not done any quantitative analysis of the ratios between the higher and lower volatile components of the hydrocarbons of the samples he had examined! He in fact went on to make absurd statements to the effect that he did study such things at all etc.. On behalf of Jan Sangharsh Manch, a quanitative analysis was carried out of the data derived from the chromatographs supplied by Shri Talati and the results ar given below:

From the above graphs, the heights of the peaks at 1.445, 2.592,4.636 and 5.638 were measured in centimeters including the graph of the control petrol ( Petrol of known source). Thereafter, the ratios of the peak height of (a) was founf with repect to peak height at (b), (c) and (d) and the results are tabulated below:

Sr. No.	Sample No.	Peak at 1.445 minutes	Peak at 2.592 minutes	Peak at 4.636 minutes	Peak at 5.638 minutes	Ratio	Ratio	Ratio
		a	b	c	d	a/b	a/c	a/d
1	Control Petrol*	4.5	1.7	0.4		2.65	11.25
2	16* (Petrol)	6.3	3	1.2	0.9	2.10	5.25	7.00
3	9 (burnt petrol)	8.1	0.7	0.5	0.4	11.57	16.20	20.25
4	23(burnt petrol)	9.3	0.7	0.4	0.4	13.29	23.25	23.25
5	33(burnt petrol)	13.8	1.5	0.8	0.8	9.20	17.25	17.25

Table showing the ratios of the height of the peak (a) to the heights of the peaks(b), (c) and (d) in all the five samples of which the chromatograms were produced by D.B.Talati before the Nanavati Commission.

The results shows that the ratio of a/b in the unburnt petrol {Sr. No.1} to be much lower than the ratio a/b of the burnt petrol! Exactly the opposite of what was the theoretical claim of Shri Talati! The fact that the same ratio of the sample 16 {Sr. No.2}matches with the ratio of the control petrol {Sr. No.1} establishes that while the theory was right, Talati’s claim of finding residual burnt petrol in the samples of S6 coach was absolutely wrong. It is therefore very clear that the FSL, Gujarat has been fabricating systematic lies to mislead the nation in believing that there was conspiracy to burn down the S6 coach. From the reverse ratios,it may now be pertinent to ask, did some one mix unburnt petrol in the samples obtained from S6 coach to fabricate the presence of Petrol??