Shortly before 8am on February 27 2002, a fire broke out on the Sabarmati Express as it pulled out of Godhra, a town prone to religious violence in the Indian state of Gujarat. Many of the passengers were Hindu pilgrims returning from a ceremony called Chetavani Yatra. Rescuers pulled 58 bodies out of carriage S-6, all of them charred beyond recognition. An official report, published four years later, in 2006, concluded that the blaze had been an accident, but at the time it was blamed on Muslim youths, who were accused of throwing petrol-bombs at the saffron-clad pilgrims.

The blood-letting started the next morning and continued until early May, leaving about 2,500 Muslims murdered. Armed with knives, firebombs and sharpened ceremonial tridents, and guided by electoral rolls that revealed the location of Muslim homes, mobs began to move across the state. ”What ensued was a ghastly sight the like of which, since bleeding partition days, no Indian eye had seen,” wrote Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, in a report by the Tribunal of Concerned Citizens, an independent body composed mostly of retired judges.