[Reader-list] Who Lit the Fire by Mohan Guruswamy

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear Friends,

By now, the news of the leak of the report of the Forensic Science 
Laboratory, Ahmedabad on the Godhra carnage that precipitated the Gujarat 
killings has sort of made it into the fine print (not headline news as it 
ought to be). If anything, this goes on to lend more credence to the theory 
that the entire sequence of events in Gujarat may have been premeditated in 
even more diabolical ways than we have been accustomed to thinking of. 

Below, you will find a text that I received on another list, by Mohan 
Guruswamy, that comes to some very disturbing conclusions. 

Now, we cut to another place, another time. 

It is very well documented that the Italian state (in collaboration with 
local fascist militias) and with the blessings of NATO notoriously 
infilitrated and even set up so-called far left "terror" groups in the 1970s 
(it was called 'Operation Gladio'). This strategy centred around the carrying 
out of spectacular bombings, which were then inevitably blamed on the far 
left, which did have some fringe terrorist elements. So it was not 
implausible to lay the blame at their door. 

One such incident was a bomb blast in the second class waiting room in 
Bologna railway station on the 2nd of August 1980 that killed 85 people and 
left over two hundred wounded.

Criminal investigations on this 'action' and on a series of other terrorist 
atrocitites in Italy finally led to the trail of agents of the SISMI (the 
Italian official internal security agency, which had earlier been called the 
SID, acting in cohorts with far right groups, one of which, called P-2 
counted amongst its members,  a man who happens to be called Silvio 
Berlusconi, and who happens to be the prime minister of Italy today). Of 
course, at that time, the media blamed the far left and anarchists for these 
bombings. But the little details of protracted criminial investigations, the 
testimonies of retired italian intelligence officials, and the subsequent 
idle boasts of respectable Italian gentlemen in the fascist establishment 
suggested a very different set of culprits. 

The devil, well, is in the details. Another place, another time, another 
railway station ?

Shuddha
----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
Who lit the fire?
Mohan Guruswamy
Email: mguru at satyam.net.in
July 5, 2002


With the outing of the report of the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL),
 Ahmedabad, the question of who lit the fire in coach S-6 of the Sabarmati
 Express at Godhra on February 27 has now assumed critical importance. This
 incident was the immediate cause of the firestorms that engulfed Gujarat and
 that frenzy now is the bedrock of the supposed BJP resurgence and its
 aggressive espousal of a virulent Hindutva. The report of MS Dahiya,
 Assistant Director of the FSL, which is now part of the charge sheet com
 letely debunks the theories about the coach being set afire by an angry mob,
 which had mysteriously collected outside the Godhra railway station. The
 report emphatically concludes that the coach was set afire by someone
 "standing in the passage of the compartment near seat number 72, using a
 container with a wide opening about 60 liters of inflammable liquid has been
 poured and then a fire has been started in the bogie."

The FSL has also conclusively demonstrated by experiments that it was
 virtually impossible to throw inflammable liquids into the train through the
 open windows that are at a height of seven feet. The report also shows that
 there was a three feet high mound running parallel to the track at a
 distance of 14 feet and if the fire bombers were standing on this mound and
 sloshing the fuel at the compartment only about 10-15% of the fuel would
 have got inside. Since the rest of the fuel would then have fallen o tside
 there would have been burn damage on and near the track. This was not so.
 File photographs of the burning coach very clearly show the flames raging
 from within and without even the external paintwork being touched. The
 pictures also show rescuers trying to hose down the flames standing right
 alongside the burning coach. Very obviously the coach was set afire from
 within and whosoever claims that it was set afire by the collected mob is
 lying through their teeth. And that might very well include the Deputy Prime
 Minister of India.

The train was chock-a-block full of kar sevaks and whosoever was carrying "a
 container with a wide opening holding about 60 liters of inflammable liquid"
 should have been able to mingle freely with the inflamed kar sevaks. If this
 whosoever it was, was carrying such a container with a wide opening quite
 openly he, she or they would have been known to the other passengers to be
 able to do so without arousing apprehensions. Remember the country was in a
 state of heightened military alert after the December 13 attack on the
 Parliament and it would just not be possible for a stranger to walk into a
 crowded coach of true believers with a large container with liquid sloshing
 about. The train was almost a Rambhakt special and each compartment was
 concentrated with people from a particular area or belonging to a particular
 group within the Sangh Parivar, all of who would have been known to each
 other. It is therefore extremely implausible that a perfect stranger or
 strangers would have been able to splash the pe rol and set it alight and
 then escape. The killer/killers would have had to been in the adjoining
 compartment or be able to alight quickly from the burning compartment
 without arousing suspicion. Consequently the theory that it was an ISI cell
 that carried out the carnage becomes extremely difficult to sustain.

The exact identification of the inflammable liquid, including the brand of
 the petrol, would be very easily obtained by spectroscopic examination, that
 is, if the police had collected samples of the charred material. If the
 quality of preliminary investigations was through even the exact type and
 material of the burned container, if it was left behind, could have been
 obtained, providing a vital step towards identifying the murderers. But that
 would be possibly asking too much of the Indian Police Servic ? However in
 such a high profile case, one would have thought that the highest standards
 of professionalism would have been strived for, especially when there were
 two Sardars in the picture. Then in all probability this is exactly what the
 persons behind the outrage would not have wanted?

It would now seem that the harassment and intimidation of the mostly Muslim
 hawkers at Godhra railway station was deliberate and aimed at provoking an
 agitated response. If this was so, the torching of coach S-6 could have been
 intended to provoke a furious backlash. This seems like a classic agent
 provocateur operation that went out of hand.

The use of an agent provocateur to create a crisis is not at all uncommon. We
 see much of it all around. Sometime it is a pig's head that is thrown in a
 mosque, another time it is a cow's head that is thrown into a temple. Cadre
 based political parties for who the end justifies all means are especially
 adept at this. Joseph Stalin, who was a small time thug working on the
 fringe of the underground Communist movement in pre-revolutionary Russia,
 caught the eye of his mentors by his ability to precipitate rises to
 mobilize the masses. I recall watching the live telecast on a local channel
 of a demonstration in Hyderabad against the increase in power tariffs and
 was struck by the extremely deliberate provocations of a very small group
 that changed a peaceful gathering into a furious mob causing the police to
 open fire at it. The demolition of the Babri Masjid was very clearly
 perpetrated by just a handful of persons who came prepared to do the job.
 The gathered crowd just joined with Sadhvi Rithambara exho ting from the
 dais "ek aur dhakha." The record shows that while Uma Bharati and Murli
 Manohar Joshi were hugging each other in ecstatic joy, LK Advani looked on
 helplessly.

Its not only cadre based political parties that do this. Countries with
 active intelligence services routinely do this. Intelligence agencies like
 the American CIA, British SIS, French SDECE, Israeli Mossad, Russian FSB,
 Chinese GRI, Pakistani ISI and even the Indian RAW carry out such operations
 quite routinely. Even now Pakistan insists that the January 30, 1971
 hijacking of "Ganga", an Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship aircraft, to
 Lahore by Hashim and Ashraf Qureshi was an Indian intelligence operati n
 meant to precipitate the termination of over flights to Dhaka making the
 link between the two Pakistani halves even more tenuous. The two Qureshi's
 were sentenced by a Pakistani court to 19 years but were exonerated by the
 Pakistan Supreme Court in 1984.

In 1991 a unit of the Peoples War Group attacked the Kakatiya Fast Passenger
 train at Charlapalli near Hyderabad killing 47 passengers in the blaze set
 off by them. It took only a small quantity of incendiary material to set off
 the blaze. One of the attackers was apprehended. Later the PWG issued a
 statement that the death of 47 passengers was inadvertent and expressed
 regret for it.

In another incident at 4.30 am on March 8, 1993 in AP's Guntur district two
 dalit youths Satuluri Chalapathi Rao (24) and Gantela Vijayvardhana Rao (22)
 inspired by the plot a popular Telugu movie held up an APRTC express bus
 from Hyderabad to Chilkaluripet under the threat of torching it. They wanted
 money to start a business. Things didn't happen as they did in the movie.
 The passengers panicked and in the ensuing melee the can of petrol dropped
 in the bus, which in turn had a leaky fuel tank and resul ed in an explosive
 fire. 22 passengers including two children were killed. In both cases while
 there was intent to commit a crime, what resulted was not intended. In the
 case of the two youths the intention was not even to set fire to the bus,
 but it happened and 22 sleeping passengers were burnt to death. The Supreme
 Court sentenced them to death in 1995, but the President considering all the
 circumstances commuted their sentence to life imprisonment and they are now
 incarcerated in Rajamundry jail.

But it is difficult to imagine that a container with a wide mouth carrying at
 least 60 liters of petrol was meant to cause just an innocuous incident on
 the Sabarmati Express. Clearly there are many questions to be answered,
 particularly in light of the subsequent events for which even the National
 Human Rights Commission, headed by as widely respected jurist as the former
 Chief Justice of India, Justice AN Verma, found the Gujarat government
 complicit. The chota Sardar in Gujarat is plowing on remorsele sly with his
 campaign of igniting communal passions, and the bada Sardar in New Delhi
 just sits there wringing his hands. As he did when the Babri Masjid was
 demolished. As he did when Hindus were killed in Doda. As he did when Sikhs
 were killed in Anantnag. As he did when Christians were killed in the Dangs.
  As he did when the Red Fort was attacked. As he did when Parliament was
 attacked on December 13. Shakespeare's wrote about Lady Macbeth: "It is an
 accustom'd action with her, to seem thus washing her hands."