Inquiry clears Indian Muslims of Gujarat train fire

A government investigation cleared Indian Muslims of causing a train fire four years ago that sparked the deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in the western Gujarat state.

The Gujarat fire in February 2002 killed more than 59 Hindus, and the following violence killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims.

A Railway Ministry-appointed inquiry commission concluded that the fire was caused by an accident and not by any deliberate attack by Muslims.

"[The fire] was not the result of a deliberate attack by anybody, and there is no evidence of any conspiracy whatsoever," committee head Umesh Chandra Banerjee, a retired Supreme Court judge, said in his report.

The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu allies, who claim that a group of Muslims were responsible for the fire, plan to protest the inquiry.

The ruling Congress party and its leftist allies say the findings of the inquiry supports their long-held charge that the BJP-led government in Gujarat state exploited the accident to target Muslims.

The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), an ally in the federal coalition led by the Congress Party, called for the resignation of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi after the government report.

“This report has exposed Modi and his party. Now it is clear that they carried out an anti-Muslim pogrom against an innocent community," said Rupchand Pal, a CPI-M member of the Parliament.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi said: "The findings clearly prove that the entire campaign of disinformation and insinuations launched by Modi immediately after the fire was simply for petty political gains."

Source: World Peace Herald