Who started the S-6 fire after all?

Would the Sabarmati express have met the same fate had someone aboard it not pulled the chain to allow the kar sevaks in, just after it left the Godhra platform? Or for that matter, would the S-6 coach have burnt had the desperate passengers, or someone outside, not opened the door?

The fire on the S-6 coach which claimed 59 lives, mostly of kar sevaks on February 27, 2002, sparking state-wide riots only raised more questions before the Nanavati-Shah commission which concluded its hearing on the Godhra carnage on Friday.

Through carefully juxtaposed excerpts from testimonies of witnesses recorded before the commission and police chargesheet, rights group Jan Sangharsh Manch (JSM) which has challenged the state government’s conspiracy theory, concluded that there was no second chain pulling at Godhra that day.

Comparing Sabarmati express with Samjhauta express fire, JSM advocate Mukul Sinha said, "Before even considering that 140 litres of petrol was used to burn S-6, the prosecution should consider that barely half a litre of kerosene was used to blast Samjhauta!"

Rebutting the state government’s conspiracy theory, Sinha told the commission that had the said molestation of the Muslim girl near the Godhra parcel office and the fracas between the railway station vendors and the kar sevaks not occurred, no crowd would have collected to pelt stones at the train. "The prosecution is trying to explain what is natural (the collecting of a crowd) in an unnatural (collecting a crowd was part of the conspiracy) manner", he said.

Corroborating testimonies of the train driver, Rajendra Rao Yadav, assistant station manager Harimohan Meena, guard Satyanarayan Verma and Sadhvi Meenakshi Devi, Sinha told the commission that the chain was pulled only once, to let in the kar sevaks. This caused a vacuum drop in five coaches of which four were set right. "The one which was not, caused the train to drag till about 800 metres which incidentally is till the ‘A’ cabin, where the incident occurred", said Sinha.

Sinha conducted a ‘session’ on physics to prove that only 100 litres of petrol thrown on the floor of the coach would push the temperature to 1000 degrees within two seconds and ignite the whole coach killing everybody. In the Godhra fire, however, passengers had some time to escape.

He objected to government pleader Sunit Shah’s earlier position on the WTC attack and alleged he had reversed the order by showing the smoke on the tower as preceding the flames.

In a video recap of the incident, he showed how the plane hit the tower, leading to a fire and then smoke.

(Source)