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OTHER RELATED LINKS How the Madness Played Itself Out

In Godhra on February 27, it looked like Partition again. Charred bodies of 57 people, including 25 women and 14 children, lay in the burnt shell of the railway coach that had been carrying them back from a yagna at Ayodhya. They were families of Ram sevaks, supporters of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad which has promised to construct a Ram temple where once the Babri Masjid stood. The story of their killing has set aflame Gujarat.

INFLAMMABLE: Communal fire

It had been a largely uneventful journey for passengers of the 9168 Dn Sabarmati Express. The train, carrying over 2,500 people, was on its way from Faizabad, near Ayodhya, to Ahmedabad in Gujarat. It was running four hours late when it pulled into Godhra railway station on the Gujarat-Madhya Pradesh border. Urmilaben Trivedi, a VHP leader who was on the train, says that as the tired Ram sevaks alighted for tea and snacks, a Muslim youth bumped into one of them (see graphic). One hour after this innocuous beginning, 57 people lay dead and the train had become a funeral pyre.

AFTERMATH:(Top) Charred remains of passengers are dragged out of the train; women injured in the attack (below)

The mystery is, if the attack was planned, then by who

The news spread like wildfire. Revenge attacks have since claimed over 100. In 26 major towns and talukas of Gujarat including Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot, Visnagar, Palanpur, Deesa and Khedbrahma, rioting and arson led to massive damage to property. Even faraway villages have not been left out of the spiral of violence. In Halad, a village in north Gujarat, bands of Hindus went on rampage when the body of a Ram sevak reached there. Hotels and businesses belonging to Muslims were attacked everywhere. Though curfew was imposed in most places and the police turned out in strength, it could not quell the violence. In Ahmedabad's Bapunagar, a township named after Mahatma Gandhi, two groups of over 2,000 each fought one another. Both were armed with swords, sticks and firearms. The casualty count is not known. A Hindu mob burnt to death Ehsaan Jafri, a former Congress MP, with his four-member family. He had reportedly called the police, but help came too late.

The mood in the state is militant. A procession of 10,000 marched with the bodies of 11 people from Ramol village near Ahmedabad who had died in the train. They were shouting slogans like, "Tumhari shahidi bekar nahi jayegi, mandir bana kar hi rahenge (Your martyrdom will not go in vain, we shall make the temple)."

Amid this, the question being asked most often is: was the attack planned? And if it was, by whom? An armed crowd of over 1,000 had participated in the attack on the Ram sevaks. Reports say one of them had an altercation with a Muslim man at Dahod railway station, 72 km from Godhra. The Sabarmati Express covered this distance in an hour. Was the time enough to mobilise so many people? Panchmahal district Superintendent of Police Raju Bhargav is keeping his options open. Godhra, the Panchmahal district headquarters, is his turf. He says he has "no information of any altercation at Dahod, but it cannot be ruled out". The whodunnit is more difficult to answer. Jehadi elements in India are suspects, and so, as always, is Pakistan's ISI. Defence Minister George Fernandes has said he doesn't rule out ISI involvement.

The police, meanwhile, have rounded up almost 100 suspects. Alleged kingpins Salim Sheikh, 38, and Abdul Rahim Dhantia, 45, are among them. Both are independent municipal councillors from Godhra and are reportedly close to the Congress. Four others, including a prominent local politician, are absconding. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, an RSS pracharak-turned-BJP politician, says, "The culprits of the gruesome incident will be brought to book, come what may." He is in a difficult situation. Though Modi had the army called into Ahmedabad, he said "the anger of five crore people of Gujarat is impossible to control everywhere with our limited police force. We have done our utmost to prevent violence from spreading". The police have been mute witness to some of the arson and looting.

Reactions to the incident from the Congress, the main opposition party in the state, have been mixed. While former chief minister Amarsinh Chaudhary condemned the attack on the train he also blamed the Ram sevaks for provoking it. Senior AICC leader Ahmed Patel condemned it strongly.

They will have time to react. The bloody cycle of violence so familiar in Gujarat may have just begun.