parliamentarian, was among those killed; and several incidents in Vadodara city. Scholars studying the 2002 riots state that they were premeditated and constituted a form of ethnic cleansing, and that the state government and law enforcement were complicit in the violence that occurred. Godhra train burning On the morning of 27 February 2002, the Sabarmati Express, returning from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad, stopped near the Godhra railway station. The passengers were Hindu pilgrims, returning from Ayodhya. An argument erupted between the train passengers and the vendors on the railway platform. The argument became violent and under uncertain circumstances four coaches of the train caught fire with many people trapped inside. In the resulting conflagration, 59 people (nine men, 25 women, and 25 children) burned to death. The government of Gujarat set up Gujarat High Court judge K. G. Shah as a one-man commission to look into the incident, but following outrage among families of victims and in the media over Shah's alleged closeness to Modi, retired Supreme Court judge G.T. Nanavati was added as chairman of the now two-person commission. In 2003, The Concerned Citizens Tribunal (CCT) concluded that the fire had been an accident. Several other independent commentators have also concluded that the fire itself was almost certainly an accident, saying that the initial cause of the conflagration has never been conclusively determined. Historian Ainslie Thomas Embree stated that the official story of the attack on the train (that it was organized and carried out by people under orders from Pakistan) was entirely baseless. The Union government led by the Indian National Congress party in 2005 also set up a committee to probe the incident, headed up by retired Supreme Court judge Umesh Chandra Banerjee. The committee concluded that the fire had begun inside the train and was most likely accidental. However, the Gujarat High Court ruled in 2006 that the matter was outside the jurisdiction of the union government, and that the committee was therefore unconstitutional. After six years of going over the details, Nanavati-Mehta Commission submitted its preliminary report which concluded that the fire was an act of arson, committed by a mob of one to two thousand locals. Maulvi Husain Haji Ibrahim Umarji, a cleric in Godhra, and a dismissed Central Reserve Police Force officer named Nanumiyan were presented as the "masterminds" behind the arson. After 24 extensions, the commission submitted its final report on 18 November