Panel waters down Haj fire tragedy report

More than 300 Indian Haj pilgrims are believed to have died in a fire that broke out in a camp in Mina on April 15, the penultimate day of the Haj.

The team is obviously referring to the statement to the press made by Indian Consul-General Mohammed Afzal Amanullah, accusing a gatekeeper of locking the gate to camp no. 59 in which Indian pilgrims were housed, thereby preventing them from escaping.

The team, consisting of Lok Sabha MPs Noor Banu (Cong), MAA Fatmi (Janata Dal), E Ahamed (Muslim League) and former MP from the Rajya Sabha Mohammed Afzal, met a number of injured pilgrims in Saudi hospitals and interviewed Saudi officials from the civil defence authorities and Haj affairs, besides officials in the Indian missions there.

The exhaustive report stops short of blaming anybody, especially the Saudi officials. “We are not supposed to give a clean chit to anybody,” team member Mohammed Afzal told journalists, when asked if the team was exonerating Saudi authorities. He added: “We only went to see our people there who were injured. In other peoples’ lands we cannot make an inquiry.”

The report seems extremely concerned about Amanullah’s statement, saying it caused “consternation” among the Saudi officials because it did not seem to be “verified”.

It warns against officials making such statements at such delicate moments because of the “best relationship” that exists between India and Saudi Arabia. “Unfortunately,” the report goes on to add, “the statement of the consul-general has been used by some people to find fault with Saudi officials.”

The report also extensively quotes Indian ambassador in Jeddah M H Ansari’s reply on whether such large-scale deaths could have been prevented. Ansari’s double-edged answer goes like this: “The locking of the gate by the doorkeeper in question could have impeded or delayed escape of some pilgrims through this point. Others, however, found the emergency exits or pushed down the tin barriers to create an exit. It is to be noted that the majority of pilgrims in this camp did manage to escape successfully. The locked door was therefore not an impediment.”

The team also interviewed Major General Sa’ad Al-Twaijer, a senior Saudi civil defence official who, denying culpability, said “more than 800,000 pilgrims were rescued from the raging fire in a short time by civil defence personnel involved in the fire-fighting.”

Al-Twaijer, in fact, told the Saudi Gazette in its issue dated April 29 that the record of Saudi Arabian fire-fighting forces was much better than that of many other countries. He elaborates how recently, a certain fire took place in the “eastern Indian state of Orissa” and how people were burnt and mauled to death in the ensuing stampede.

“We dealt (with) something larger than that and controlled it in record time,” Al-Twaijer said.

The team emphasised to journalists here today that the Saudi government had already ordered an inquiry into the fire, that civil defence personnel in Mina pressed three fire-fighting helicopters into service when the fire broke out on April 15, tried to contain the raging blaze and then gave the best possible medical treatment to the injured pilgrims.

“We went from ward to ward in the Saudi hospitals talking to the Indian pilgrims and they were in tears that someone from home had come asking for them,” Noor Banu said.

The members admitted, however, that the tents in which the pilgrims were housed were not made of fire-resistant material. They added that the Saudi authorities had promised to convert 20 per cent of the tents next year, thereby completing the process in five years. Mohammed Afzal said he did not think the Saudis lacked the money to do so.

The Saudi authorities told the visiting team that the cause of the fire was not definite yet: it could have either been a burst LPG cylinder or a short circuit in the Pakistani camp or even a spark from a local camp located behind the Pakistani camp.