Godhra Tak: A note from the Filmmaker

Though many filmmakers focused on the genocide that followed the Godhra tragedy, the fact that there was not much visual documentation of the initial tragedy itself led me to painstakingly cull out the actual factors that precipitated the tragedy. Though the film Godhra Tak: The Terror Trail is generally acclaimed as an unbiased and balanced statement of facts, I was hounded by VHP even for such depiction. My press conference was attacked in Ahmedabad recently on October 20, 2003 by VHP activists in the presence of print as well as electronic media journalists. The Government of Gujarat harassed me all through. I was told not to screen it further. I wonder why VHP should be out to suppress my voice and the facts and whether they have anything to conceal.

Godhra Tak: The Terror Trail is an investigative documentation of the barbaric incident on 27 Feb 2002, when coach S6 of Sabermati Express was burnt at Godhra in Gujarat, India. Fifty-nine people including several Karsevaks died in that fire. The film tries to find out what actually happened at Godhra railway station on that day and how far the allegation of a conspiracy is true. In this hour-long documentary independent forensic expert Dr. V. N. Sehgal has “demonstrated” with material evidence, testimony and logic that the attack on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra was not a “conspiracy” and it was a “continuation of happenings on Platform no. 1 at the railway station earlier”.

During filming I moved discretely with a small crew and kept a low profile, often searching each individual address by myself. I took this up as a professional challenge as most people were using the Godhra incident to justify the later communal violence in Gujarat.

To make this film I tracked the route of the first batch of Karsevaks from Gujarat to Ayodhya and back and dug out the atrocities committed by this batch of Karsevaks. I interviewed victims at Rudooli and recorded the problems faced by the passengers who booked their tickets in S6. The film also narrates the events at Godhra railway station with the help of people who were present at the platform and the Karsevaks. The film investigated the burning of the coach S6 with the help of Dr Mukul Sinha, an advocate in Gujarat High court who is participating in the Godhra inquiry commission constituted by the Gujarat government as an independent observer, and Dr V. N. Sehgal, former Director, Central Forensic Science Laboratory and member, Interpol, who was professionally engaged by me to do the on-the-spot- investigation. I also interviewed a wide range of people in this effort including Pravin Togadia, International General Secretary, VHP, Vinay Katiyar, President, BJP, Uttar Pradesh, Jaydeep Patel, General Secretary, VHP, Gujarat, as well as the Karsevaks who were in S6 on that fateful day, and presented their viewpoints.

In this film Vinay Katiyar reveals the real agenda of Sangh by saying that the Hindu religion will prevail over the world after the end of the fight and Mecca and Medina are Hindu places. While Anjali Mody and Sheetla Singh, both journalists, comments on whole history of troublesome behaviour of VHP activists, film shows interviews of victims of Karsevaks violence at Rudauli station, interviews of passengers who had actually booked their tickets in S6 narrating the bad misbehaviour they met in the hand of Karsevaks, incidents taken place at Godhra platform number 1 and interviews of victims of Karsevaks stabbing at Baroda station. All these were never visually documented.

The film conclusively proves, through the interviews of experts and survivors wrong that there was a mob waiting near Cabin A to ambush the train and establishes that the crowd collected along the tracks near the cabin in small groups, gradually, many of them running along with the train as it left the Godhra station at low speed. In the film, Advocate Mr. Mukul Sinha quotes from statements of RPF police constable Mohan Jagdish Yadev and the cabinman manning the Cabin A and establishes that no crowed was there near cabin A before the arrival of the train there. By analyzing the topography of the crime scene Dr. Sehgal says “people can reach the scene of crime in a number of ways. One is if they try to start from railway station and move along the track which they can do very slowly because there is a bridge on the way and some part of the bridge is uncovered. So the movement of the crowed could be very slow. Other rout they can follow is that they may come upto the bridge through other route and clime the bridge which is in between the crime scene and the Godhra railway station and walk along the railway track. The third is behind the drain which, I said, is along the slop, people can collect in a large number and stay behind the bushes and can watch and can do what ever they like. This is the third methered of getting assembled.” With this I established that only few people were near the train and majority of them were behind the busses. With the help of eye witness accounts film says that even when the train stopped, the kar sevaks too got down and threw stones at the local people living near Cabin A. So, the incident at cabin A was nothing else but a continuation of the happenings on the platform number 1 and not a conspiracy. This is a new finding.

The film also proves that fire was from inside and not from outside. Sehgal says “The window being seven feats--- the experiments indicates that hardly fifteen to twenty percent liquid will go inside. ---Similarly even if they stand on the heap of the stones, as they did, even then their attempt was in failure.” He adds “If the inflammable liquid had been thrown or an attempt was made to throw it inside the bogey the liquid would have fallen on the track and that liquid would have shown its existence by affecting the lower portion of the S6 bogey which did not take place. As such it s clear that there was no liquid in huge quantities thrown inside”.

Apart from other proves Sehgal has used the burning pattern of vestibule to show that the fire was from inside He says “I found that the damage on this vestibule is of peculiar nature in the sense that the fire had burned inner portion more of the vestibule then the outer portion indicating that the fire had resulted from inside to outside and not visa versa.” It is also a new point.

The film also rediculates the claim by prosecution that some body had entered the compartment S6 through vestibule and poured inflammable material inside. Sehgal says “this theory does not look like possible for the simple reason that number of persons who are in the coach already present will certainly notice if somebody enters and tries to do some mischief.” Dr. Mukul Sinha adds on and says “There is no evidence till so far to show that there was any person who had actually done such a thing. In fact we have asked-the commission had tried to investigate and find out. Nobody, neither the passengers nor the Karsevakes or anybody has given an iota of evidence that somebody had entered the S6 coach with some amount of inflammable material and had poured the same inside the coach.”

In the film Sehgal claims that “If somebody was caring petrol inside the carriage due to any reason--- if there is a critical ratio between air and petrol this works as an explosive mixture. This explosive mixture burns very fast and may be the case in this case.”

Godhra Tak: The Terror Trail places the Godhra tragedy in the context of broader political interests manifesting for quite sometime in the Ram Janmabhoomi Movement, which attempted to deepen the communal divide in this country. It warns that the clear consequence of such communal polarization is that tragedies like that of Godhra may be maneuvered anytime, anywhere in this country by the communal forces with an eye on the electoral gains. The film invites us to observe that such ‘movements’ are floated or revived just before elections, a further indication of the motives of the communal leaders.