Pulwama, Balakot and burning of Coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express

The leaked WhatsApp chat between Republic TV founder-editor Arnab Goswami and former CEO of the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) Partho Dasgupta only confirms what was already being suspected that the Pulwama terrorist attack resulting in death of 40-odd CRPF jawans on February 14, 2019 could not be what the Narendra Modi wanted the people to believe. Within a fortnight, on February 27 to be precise, the IAF bombed the terror camp at Balakot in Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The Modi government then claimed that the IAF strike was in retaliation to Pakistan-trained terrorists’ attack on CRPF vehicles in Pulwama district. It was never explained by the government how the suicide bomber had been able to penetrate the high security network to reach the CRPF vehicles, particularly as the security in the region was made more tight about that time in view of the ongoing Amarnath Yatra. Nor did the government come up with a precise number of terrorists killed in the IAF strike on the Balakot training camp.

As the government had failed to satisfy the people on both Pulwama and Balakot incidents, suspicion had grown in public mind that the Modi coterie was itself engineering terrorist attacks with a view to making some political gains in the elections. Hari Shankar Vyas, Editor-Owner of Hindi daily “Naya India” and once an ardent supporter of Narendra Modi, wrote in one of his columns that NSA Ajit Doval was squarely responsible for Pulwama terrorist attack as well as for providing wrong information about Balakot target to Indian Air Force with the result that terrorists and their madarsa escaped the air attack. Now the Goswami-Dasgupta chat gives a broad – but unmistakable – hint that these incidents were contrived to make Modi sweep the Lok Sabha polls, a few months away.

Opposition leaders, who wanted to know from the government how many terrorists were killed in IAF strike at Balakot, were branded by Narendra Modi and then BJP president Amit Shah as pro-Pakistan and traitors to the Nation. Then the family members of the CRPF jawans killed in the terrorist attack in Pulwama had also become pro-Pakistan and traitors to the Nation, as per Modi-Shah duo’s definition. Ram Vakeel of Mainpuri was one of the jawans martyred in the Pulwama terror attack. His wife Geeta Devi asked the government, through a newspaper interview, to provide proof of the terrorists killed in the IAF strike. His sister Ramraksha said the people need to know what was the outcome of the IAF strike. “How do we know that the strike occurred and the terrorists were killed”, she said. Vakeel’s mother Amitshree also demanded proof of the terrorists killed in the air strike. Earlier, Sarmishtha Devi, wife of slain CRPF jawan Pradeep Kumar of Shamli, had said that they were not satisfied with the government’s claim about Balakot air strike on terrorist camps.

Modi was perhaps emboldened to engineer Pulwama and Balakot by his ‘”successful” Godhra experiment. All the theories put forward by then Gujarat Chief Minister Modi and his government about the burning of Coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express off Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002 turned out to be bunkum. All the passengers in Coach S-6 were not Kar Sevaks returning from Ayodhya. According to a Railway Ministry statement of august 21, 2002, in Coach S-6 on that day a total of 59 passengers had made reservations, most of these were made from Lucknow and Kanpur. Three of them had cancelled their bookings. The Railway Ministry had “after comprehensive investigation” found that out of the 56 persons who had their reservations in the Coach, four were killed, nine were injured and seven were still missing”. The Railway Ministry further said that its investigation found that “32 of them were alive and safe” and that the remaining passengers who had perished in the burning coach “appear to have boarded the Coach without reservation”.

Modi, however, completed in the next few days “identification” of 58 Kar Sevaks, arranged their cremations fitting to martyrs and announced Rs 2 lakh to the next of kin of each. How did he identify them so fast because they did not even have reservations in the coach – barring a few? Then Gujarat Minister of State for Home Amit Shah had concluded that the fire was set after throwing petrol from outside. This theory was debunked by Gujarat’s own Government Forensic Science Laboratory. A team of forensic experts visited the place of offence on May 3, 2002. In order to recreate the real picture of how the offence was committed on the day of the incident, one coach was kept on the same spot. With the help of different types of containers experimental demonstrations were also carried out by using liquids inside the coach. They found that the height of the window of the coach was around 7 ft. from the ground of the place. As such, it was not possible to throw any inflammable fluid inside from outside the coach from any bucket or carboy because by doing this, most of the fluid was getting thrown outside.

This was followed by a massacre of Muslims which got a thumping victory to Modi and his party in the Assembly elections a few months later.