AHMEDABAD, Sept 25: An investigation into one of India’s worst outbursts of violence between Hindus and Muslims cleared the Hindu nationalist state government on Thursday of any involvement in the riots. Opposition politicians branded the report a whitewash.

About 1,000 people were killed when groups of Hindus rampaged through Muslim neighbourhoods and towns in the western state of Gujarat in February-April 2002. Most of the dead were Muslims.

The riots were triggered by a fire that killed 60 passengers on a train packed with Hindu pilgrims in the town Godhra. Hindu extremists blamed the deaths on Muslims.

The report, handed to the Gujarat state Parliament on Thursday, said the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party under Chief Minister Narendra Modi — which was in power at the time and still rules the state today — had no role in the riots.

“There is absolutely no evidence to show that either the chief minister or any other ministers ... or police officers had played any role in the Godhra incident,” the report found.

It also said that there was no evidence of “any lapse on their part in the matter of providing protection, relief and rehabilitation to the victims of communal riots.”

In clearing Modi and his government, the report went beyond its scope, which was to investigate the train fire only. A second report on the subsequent riots is set to be released in December.

The report also said that the deadly fire on the train had been deliberately set by Muslim activists who doused the train in gasoline.

An earlier investigation by the railways found the incident to have been an accident.

“There is no doubt it was an accident,” U.C. Banerjee, a former Supreme Court justice who headed that investigation, told the NDTV news channel.

The findings of the commission headed by Supreme Court Justice G. T. Nanavati are also in stark contrast to previous reports, which said that Modi and other officials did nothing to stop the riots. Some even suggested he had tacitly encouraged the bloodshed.

The United States has been sceptical of Modi as well, refusing to issue him a diplomatic visa in 2005 because Indian investigators held his administration responsible for the violence.

“The truth had finally come out,” said BJP spokesman Prakash Javadekar, who called the report a “scientific and exhaustive judicial work.” The Nanavati commission questioned more than 1,000 witnesses over six years.

However, the Congress party, which is the main opposition in the state, called the report a farce.

“I don’t think you can expect an independent and partial result when the report was commissioned and submitted to the principal accused,” said Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi.

Congress lawmakers staged a walkout from the state legislature after the findings were presented.

Relations between Hindus, who make up more than 80 percent of India’s population, and Muslims, who account for about 130 million of its 1.1 billion people, have been relatively peaceful since the bloody partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan at independence from Britain in 1947. Still, there have been sporadic bouts of violence.—AP