AHMEDABAD/NEW DELHI, 8 July — Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani has rejected a forensic report that contradicts the government’s view that a supposedly Muslim mob had set a train on fire from outside, killing 58 Hindus, in February near here.

The contention of Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory that the fire, which engulfed two coaches of Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station, was ignited from within them was untenable, Advani told reporters here yesterday.

“How could women, children and other travelers keep inflammable or explosives to take their own lives?” Advani asked during a day’s visit here, while rejecting the laboratory’s report.

“The idea is frivolous.”

Although a retired high court judge is still probing the Feb. 27 train fire, both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s government in New Delhi and the Gujarat government have virtually blamed Godhra’s Muslims for the tragedy.

Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who belong to Vajpayee’s Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), suggested that the train fire was the result of a conspiracy by a Muslim mob that was aided by Pakistani subversives.

They claimed that a 1,500-strong mob forcibly stopped the train just outside the railway station at Godhra, and threw inflammable material, including petrol bombs, on the coaches and set them on fire.

As the train deaths triggered horrific reprisal killings by Hindu mobs of Muslims across Gujarat, many in the BJP and its affiliated Hindu extremist groups sought to justify the carnage as a reaction to the Godhra event.

Hindu groups went on the rampage across Gujarat from Feb. 28, slaughtering Muslims, looting their properties or setting them on fire. Over 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed in three months.

But last week, the Ahmedabad laboratory stunned everyone with its suggestion that it was virtually impossible to have started the fire from outside. After holding a simulated exercise at the same spot, a forensic team concluded that the fire started from within the coaches.

Advani, who represents state capital Gandhinagar in the Lok Sabha, made his comments during a day-long visit here. Advani rushed to Bombay yesterday to attend the funeral of business tycoon Dhirubhai Ambani, who passed away late Saturday.

It was Advani’s first visit to his state since his elevation as the deputy prime minister last week.

Meanwhile, a Muslim man was killed and three people injured when police fired live rounds to disperse a mob in the riot-scarred Gujarat overnight, a police spokesman said.

The incident occurred in Chotta Udaipur, about 200 km from Ahmedabad, when around 150 Hindus and Muslims clashed after an argument late Saturday, the spokesman said.

During the violence 33 shops were burned down before the mob was dispersed by police, he said. “The situation is tense but under control,” he added.