Decode Politics: Modi raises a report on 2002 Godhra train burning to attack Lalu, Congress. What was it?
While addressing an election rally in Bihar’s Darbhanga on May 4, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a reference to the Justice U C Banerjee Commission that had probed the Godhra train burning incident of 2002.
The PM said the then Railway Minister (Lalu Prasad) “acted in connivance with the Congress”, which headed the UPA-1 government at the Centre, to set free the accused in the train burning.
Without mentioning Lalu by name, Modi said: “When the kar sevaks were burnt alive in Godhra, the Railway Minister (Lalu Prasad) was the father of this shehzade (in an apparent reference to Tejashwi Yadav)… To save the accused, he appointed a committee headed by a Supreme Court judge… Its name was Ben-raji committee (the PM twisted the name Banerjee, apparently to indicate it was a compliant panel). Soniaben ka raaj tha… aur isiliye unhone Ben-raji committee banayi (It was the rule of Sonia Gandhi… and that is why they set up the Ben-raji committee)… They got a report written through him (Banerjee) declaring that those who burnt alive the 60 kar sevaks were innocent and should be set free.”
What committee was Modi talking about?
On February 27, 2002, 59 passengers, mostly kar sevaks who were part of the Ram Temple movement and returning from Ayodhya, died when the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express they were in caught fire at the Godhra Railway Station. The incident sparked off the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat.
In 2004, the Ministry of Railways, then under Lalu, set up a high-level committee under retired Supreme Court Justice Umesh Chandra Banerjee to investigate the fire. The committee was set up under Section 114 of the Railways Act 1989, which mandates an inquiry into a train accident “resulting in loss of human life or grievous hurt”.
The panel’s terms of reference were to ascertain the cause of the fire, to look into the events after the train left Muzaffarpur on February 25, 2002, and till it reached Godhra through the states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The inquiry was to also ascertain acts of omission and commission.
On January 17, 2005, the committee submitted an interim report concluding that the fire was “accidental” and not a “deliberate attempted event”.
Was it the only committee to probe the fire?
No. A simultaneous inquiry was held by a commission appointed in March 2002 by the Gujarat government headed by Modi as chief minister. This commission included Justices G D Nanavati and K J Shah.
Earlier, the Modi government had also appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) under Gujarat-cadre IPS officer Rakesh Asthana to investigate the incident, which had already concluded that the fire was the outcome of a conspiracy.
Incidentally, in his role as a CBI officer earlier, Asthana had investigated the fodder scam in which Lalu was convicted.
What happened to the Banerjee Committee report?
In December 2005, the Banerjee Committee was upgraded to a ‘Commission’ by the Railway Ministry under the Commissions of Inquiry Act as it said it could not complete its investigation due to “the lack of cooperation from some vital witnesses” .
With its new powers, the Commission summoned several Gujarat Police officers as witnesses. The Modi government initially did not permit the deposition of the officers, but later allowed them to testify.
Among the IPS officers who testified were retired Director General of Police R B Sreekumar, who headed the Intelligence Bureau in 2002; J K Bhatt, the then Superintendent of Police (Western Railway); and Raju Bhargav, who was the Superintendent of Police of Panchmahal in 2002. All of them had already deposed before the Nanavati-Shah commission.
The only IAS officer to depose before the Banerjee Commission was Jayanti Ravi, the Collector of the Panchmahal district at the time of the Godhra train incident. Ravi was then a part of the National Advisory Council (NAC), a think tank of the UPA-1 government, under senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi.
What was the BJP’s stand all through this?
The BJP strongly criticised Justice Banerjee for submitting his interim report just ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar in 2005.
That year, Bihar saw two Assembly elections. The first election in February 2005 – a month after the Banerjee Committee’s interim report – delivered a fractured verdict and parties were unable to come to an arrangement. Following this, the second Assembly election was held in October 2005 over five phases. The Janata Dal (U), which was part of the BJP-led NDA at the time, went on to form the government and Nitish Kumar became the CM.
In a statement, the BJP then said that the “accident theory” concluded by the Banerjee panel was “propounded by the accused in the case and repeated by Shri Laloo Prasad Yadav, the Railway Minister”. The party accused Justice Banerjee of “stamping” the same theory.
The BJP also questioned the appointment of the Banerjee panel on the ground that an inquiry by a commission set up by it was pending. It argued that policing was a state subject, calling the report “an extra-constitutional interference in the administration of justice since the trial is pending before the appropriate court”.
What have the courts said?
The Banerjee Commission submitted its final report on March 3, 2006, a day before it wound up operations. It stood by its conclusion that the fire was “accidental”.
Weeks later, a Bench of the Gujarat High Court upheld an order by a single-judge Bench that had stayed the tabling of the Banerjee Commission’s report in Parliament or of its publicity elsewhere.
The High Court was acting on a petition filed by a survivor named Neelkanth Bhatia, who was on the Sabarmati Express when the incident occurred.
In July 2006, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Gujarat High Court to stay the Banerjee report. Justice Banerjee passed away in 2012.
What happened to the Nanavati-Shah Commission?
In 2008, Justice Shah passed away and was replaced by Justice Akshay Mehta, after which the panel was called the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. Its scope, expanded to probe the Chief Minister and his Council of Ministers, said in its first report, in 2008, on the train burning that the incident was “pre-planned”.
In its final report, submitted to the Gujarat government in 2014, months after Modi became PM, the Nanavati-Mehta Commission held that there was no “conspiracy behind the riots that followed the train burning” and that they were “an outcome of the Godhra incident”.
What happened to the case?
On the directions of the Supreme Court, the Godhra case was also investigated by an SIT under former CBI director R K Raghavan; it was among the nine Gujarat riot cases to be investigated by the SIT.
Based on the SIT investigation, in March 2011, a special court convicted 31 of 94 accused in the train burning case, acquitting 63, including “mastermind” Maulana Husain Umarji, and giving death penalties to 11.
In October 2017, the Gujarat High Court commuted the death penalties to life sentences. The court upheld the conspiracy theory but said it was “neither terrorism nor an act of waging war against the State”.
For the latest news from across India, Political updates, Explainers, Sports News, Opinion, Entertainment Updates and more Top News, visit Indian Express. Subscribe to our award-winning Newsletter Download our App here Android & iOS