The Hindu : Front Page : Godhra report details negligence by Railways

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 22, 2005

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Godhra report details negligence by Railways

By Siddharth Varadarajan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 21. Apart from concluding that the fire which engulfed the Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, 2002 was probably caused by an accident, the Justice U.C. Banerjee Committee has indicted the Railways on at least eight counts of negligence, amounting, in many cases, to serious violation of procedures mandated either by statute or plain common sense.

To the millions of Indians who travel by train every day, the picture that emerges is a sobering — and even disturbing — one.

Hinting that the officials involved were either incompetent or effecting a cover-up, Mr. Justice Banerjee writes that if the way the Railways acted in the run-up to and aftermath of the Godhra fire can be taken to be "the normal functioning of the Railways... then only God can help the passengers."

Describing the violations in considerable detail, the committee's 165-page Interim Report — a copy of which is with The Hindu — attacks senior railway officials for giving credence to rumours about the incident that were patently false or absurd. At any rate, the Railways was party to both the destruction of forensic evidence and a sloppy system of record-keeping, which combined to help obscure the truth about the circumstances under which 59 passengers were burnt to death on board coach S-6 of the train.

The report — whose strong logic is sadly marred by a meandering narrative and imprecise syntax — begins by attacking the Railways for not instituting its own inquiry into the incident, as mandated by law. The Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS), Mumbai, said this was because the Gujarat Government had set up a commission of inquiry. Pointing out that the Shah Commission was notified only on March 6, 2002, i.e., eight days after the incident, Mr. Justice Banerjee says "the explanation put forth by the CRS is unacceptable... The notification for an enquiry under the Railways Act should and ought to have been issued by him within 48 hours from the time of intimation" of the incident.

Mr. Justice Banerjee takes exception to the use of the stock phrase "set on fire" by senior officials in referring to the burning of S-6. "Before making any comment as to how the fire originated, one is required to examine the necessary details and that is precisely why the Railways Act provided for a Railway inquiry." He suggests that the railway authorities' eagerness to come to a "pre-determined conclusion as to the cause of the fire" was reminiscent of the "Modern Day Neros" in the Gujarat Government — indicted by the Supreme Court in its Best Bakery judgment for "looking elsewhere while innocent people died and... . deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be saved or protected."

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Evidence destroyed, records fudged

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