PRIME SUSPECTS: (From above) Godhra Municipality councillors Kalota, Shaikh, Abdul Rehman and Haji have been arrested; relief workers remove bodies from the train

The perception now is that what happened on february 27 was a terrorist act.

On the night of March 3, as a grim Godhra watched television for updates on the communal killings in Gujarat and resigned itself to an extended curfew, a crack team of the state's anti-terrorist squad was closing in on some citizens. Having made vital arrests in Godhra's Polan Bazar in the morning in connection with the burning of the Sabarmati Express, it was now waiting for information from a reconnaissance group that had visited Mithikhan Mohalla, Polan's thickly populated and predominantly Muslim section.

The Mithikhan raid netted Mohammed Husain Abdul Rahim Kalota, president of the Godhra Municipal Council. Kalota was hiding in a terrace cabin with a transporter friend, Shiraz Jamsha, when the Anti-Terrorist Squad caught up with him. He did not offer any resistance. With two other councillors-Abdul Rehman Abdul Majid Dhantia alias Kan-katta and Salim Abdul Gaffer Shaikh-arrested earlier in the day, the investigation was making brisk progress. For the moment at least.

The interrogation of Kalota confirmed what the intelligence agencies had suspected: that the civic chief and his associates, including a local imam, had hidden "dubious outsiders" in Polan Bazar a few days before the train massacre. The suspected foreign elements apart, some of these outsiders were from neighbouring Ratlam. They are believed to have carried out the attack in connivance with Kalota and his associates. Among these were councillors Bilal Haji, Farookh Bhana and Yakub Bakkar and transporter Yusuf Charkha. They are now on the run.

As the police began piecing together the information gathered during the arrests, they realised that there was more to the train burning than met the eye. The perception now is that the events of February 27 were not a spontaneous outburst of religious hatred but a premeditated terrorist act. Besides provocative religious literature, false passports, crude bombs and other ammunition, the recovery of photographs showing Haji with Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar and others depicting terrorist camps in India and abroad were a major giveaway.

Cover Story

"There was thick smoke all around ... I passed out ... when I woke up my grandson was missing." Janakidevi Chaurasia, passenger on Sabarmati Express As the train pulled out of Godhra station, Janakidevi, travelling with her husband, son and grandson Rishab, heard stones hitting it. Seated on an upper berth in S-6 she was scared but safe. The train moved and stopped again. Her husband Lallan told her to stay put because a huge mob had attacked them. By then the doors and windows on the platform side of the train were shut. Suddenly Gyan Prakash, her son, spotted fire on the other side. Just then bottles landed inside the coach. "There was black smoke all around. Somebody pulled me down and pushed me from the train. Then I passed out." When she regained consciousness she found her husband and son, but Rishab had disappeared. They haven't found him yet.

Haji had come under the scanner earlier when the Kolkata Police arrested Sayeed Shah Haseeb Raza, deputy commander of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-e-Islami, which is suspected of involvement in the USIS attack in that city. A diary found on Raza had coded inscriptions and documents which reportedly pointed to his links with Haji. Raza, who was arrested from a railway ticket counter at Howrah station, is also a founder member of SIMI and is responsible for recruiting young men. He is believed to have sent SIMI activists to help Haji in his Sabarmati Express operation.

There are several pointers to suggest that Haji and others had planned the incident. The SIMI workers are said to have undertaken a detailed study of the area for at least 10 days before the operation. Unconfirmed reports say that some "outsiders" had also been camping in the madarsa near the Ramsagar lake for some time. And that they had been talking of "teaching kar sevaks a lesson".

One theory has it that they had been provoked by the alleged misbehaviour of the kar sevaks on the train and on railway platforms where they picked fights with vendors who happened to be Muslim. So a full-fledged sabotage team was on board the Sabarmati well before it reached Godhra. When the train was about to leave Godhra after arriving at 7.43 a.m., a kar sevak got into a scuffle with a tea vendor. Immediately, a volley of stones hit the train from either side and an emergency chain was pulled from a general coach, bringing the train to a stop. When the engine driver did not comply, another alarm went off, this time from the S-10 coach. This was also ignored, and the S-6 coach, which was later set on fire, sent an SOS. Apparently, several calls were made even earlier, from the previous station.

Further, petrol cans and other inflammable material found at the spot along with statements of witnesses suggest that a well-prepared mob was waiting to attack the train. A part of the design was also exposed when intelligence agencies intercepted calls made by some of the accused after the incident. The original plan, surmises a senior investigating officer, may have been to set the entire train on fire. The larger objective was to create widespread panic and hold up the Ram temple campaign.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who has set up a judicial commission to look into the matter, believes that the Godhra massacre was an "act of terrorism". What is worrying the authorities is the extensive network of the suspects. Most of the accused have criminal records. While Bilal had been a close associate of Dawood Ibrahim's Gujarat pointman Abdul Latif, who was killed in an encounter, Kalota and Dhantia are said to have reached the councillor's post after being small-time thieves. Dhantia, who now owns two cement factories, was booked for rioting in the 1981 communal violence in Godhra. Kalota, a practising lawyer, is believed to have been helping locals make fake passport applications and get them cleared. A good number of these locals were transporters who were involved in narcotics and arms trafficking. It was from Kalota's premises that the police recovered half-a-dozen false passports belonging to Haji.

Kalota and the other councillors are also alleged to have siphoned off Rs 25 lakh of municipality funds. As president, Kalota reportedly issued cheques in the names of some councillors, including Congress members, a day before the massacre. The cheques were deposited in the bank the same day but the money could not be withdrawn. The police suspect that the councillors may have wanted the money to reward those involved in the carnage.

The investigating agencies are now looking for direct links and concrete evidence to back their theories. Finding these in the ashes of the Sabarmati Express may prove difficult.