Godhra victims may not have been kar sevaks

5 Aug 2002
Rajesh Ramachandran
The Times of India

NEW DELHI: All along, the government has been maintaining that most of the 58 persons killed when the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was set ablaze in Godhra were kar sevaks. But according to highly-placed railway sources, the reservation for the entire coach was from Lucknow and not Faizabad, which is about 120 km before Lucknow.

The investigators are yet to track down and interview those who held reservations on the coach. This was disclosed on Saturday by railway minister Nitish Kumar, who said the railway traffic department had only recently been asked to look up the reservation slips of the passengers booked in S-6 so that traffic inspectors could go to their houses and verify whether they had actually travelled.

While the passengers could provide crucial evidence about how the fire started — especially now that forensic reports say inflammable material was poured from inside — the rail authorities are only interested in handing out claim forms. Nitish said the criminal investigation was a separate matter which did not come under the purview of the railways.

It is not clear if the Gujarat police, who are investigating the Godhra incident, have sought the reservation slips. Nitish said the reason his ministry had not yet released the list of passengers aboard S-6 or done the ‘‘analysis’’ (for which the list is being held up now) earlier, was because he had given instructions to gather the information only after The Times of India sought the list from him on July 5.

‘‘The ticket examiner has written in the chart that he could not get into coach S-6 and hence could not verify how many passengers in the reservation list had actually travelled,’’ he said. The railways has consistently refused to publish the list of passengers of S-6.‘‘Only nine of the 58 persons killed in the incident have been identified from the reservation chart,’’ Nitish said.

So there was no point in publishing the chart because we cannot certify that all those passengers had actually travelled, he added. Incidentally, 19 of the 58 dead are still to be identified. Nitish said that after information on the reserved passengers was collected, the ministry would publish the list in a fortnight along with its ‘‘analysis’’.