List of Godhra victims still a secret

21 Jul 2002
Rajesh Ramachandran
The Times of India

NEW DELHI: Five months after the S-6 compartment of Sabarmati Express was set afire at Godhra, the Railways is yet to make public the list of reserved passengers travelling in the ill-fated coach in which 58 persons died and scores were injured.

In the light of the controversy surrounding the Gujarat Forensic Science Laboratory (GFSL) report which says that the inflammable liquid which destroyed S-6 was poured from inside the coach, the testimony of reserved passengers assumes vital significance. Despite persistent efforts over the past month by The Times of India - which wants the reservation list in order to interview passengers about the fateful last moments before S-6 caught fire - Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar is not willing to part with the names.

Nitish has been distancing his ministry from the Godhra carnage on the ground that what happened was not a ‘rail accident’ but a law and order issue. But the very fact that the Railways made ex-gratia payments to the relatives of those killed and to those injured proves that the ministry indeed treated Godhra as any other ‘accident’.

After all rail accidents, the list of passengers and victims is usually published by the rail ministry. In fact, TOI managed to obtain an internal Western Railways (WR) list of the dead and injured. But the reserved passenger list for S-6 appears to have been treated as something of a state secret.

Though the Gujarat government released the names of 39 of those who died — it is known that 19 victims have yet to be identified — the WR list reveals a hitherto unknown fact: That one of the four passengers who suffered grievous injuries was a Muslim. Ibrahim Bhai was treated at a hospital in Baroda and paid Rs 5,000 ex-gratia on March 5. It is not known whether he was a reserved or unreserved passenger and whether there were other Muslim passengers who also fell victim to the frenzied mob attack at Godhra.