LONDON, March 20: The gory train incident in Indian Gujarat was sparked by drunken Hindu zealots by assaulting a Muslim girl which led to a brawl between the two communities at Godhra station, reported a leading British daily, The Independent, on Wednesday.

The British daily has dismissed many theories linked to killings of 58 Hindus and said Indian allegations of involvement of Pakistani intelligence agency was far-fetched.

“Official investigations are under way, but the massacre has become a political football and it is hard to imagine any conclusions untainted by political calculation. Fortunately, conscientious local journalists have been hard at work. The evidence they have amassed, together with new witness accounts obtained by The Independent, paints a clear and persuasive picture of an avoidable tragedy”, it wrote.

The daily said that according to eye-witnesses, the trouble started at least 36 hours before the actual tragedy and could have been avoided by timely action.

At least 700 people have been killed in Gujrat and Ahmedabad in one of the worst communal violence in India. Majority of them are Muslims who were burnt alive by Hindu zealots.

“So the exact nature of what happened at Godhra has become a matter of intense interest. Theories abound: it was the work of Pakistan’s military intelligence, the ISI, India’s all-purpose bogeyman; it was the doing of mujahideen; it was a pre-planned conspiracy by the local Muslim community, hence the arrest of practically all the prominent Muslims in the town. The problem is that none of these theories mesh with the evidence,” said The Independent on Wednesday.

Giving details, the daily said , on Feb 25, at 5.30 pm, several hundred karsevaks in Ayodhya tramped to the nearby station of Faizabad and boarded the Sabarmati Express.

It said the karsevaks from Gujarat were in Ayodhya because India’s great D-Day is fast approaching. The event, they claim, that will ring in the era of true Hindu self-assertion is the building of a mighty temple on the supposed site of the birth of the Hindu god, Ram, at Ayodhya.

“Trouble had started at Dahod station, nearly one hour and 75 kms up the tracks. The train had reached Dahod around 6 am, and a number of karsevaks got out of compartment S/6 to have tea and snacks at a stall on the platform. Already they were drunk and unruly”, said the daily.

An argument broke out between the Hindus and the Muslim man running the tea stall — according to one account, they refused to pay unless he chanted “Jai Shri Ram”, the chant of Lord Ram’s devotees, said the daily.

“He refused to oblige, and they started to smash up his stall, before climbing back into the carriage. The stallholder filed a complaint with the railway police”, the daily said.

“At Godhra, a similar scene ensued. The karsevaks, now noisily drunk, poured on to the platform, ordered more tea and snacks, consumed them, and then made difficulties. Exactly what transpired between the bearded Muslim stallholder and the travellers varies from one account to another. But all witness accounts seen by The Independent agree that there was a row”, it said.

“They pulled his beard and beat him up... They kept repeating the slogan ‘mandir ki nirmaan karo, Babar ki aulad ko bahar karo’.” (“Build the temple and throw out the Muslims...”)

“Suddenly the row took a dangerous new turn: the karsevaks grabbed hold of a Muslim woman. Her identity, and how she became involved, remain ambiguous, but four different witnesses mention this event”.—APP