A two-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been sent to Bihar after three persons arrested by the State police claimed that Pakistan’s ISI was behind two recent train accidents near Kanpur.
The Home Ministry has also sought reports from the State government and Central security agencies on the disclosures of the trio, Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar and Mukesh Yadav to the Bihar police.
An official said it was too early to state conclusively that Pakistan’s ISI was involved in the train accidents. But the possibility was not being ruled out. Central intelligence agencies were now questioning the three accused.
Fact checking
“We are in touch with the Bihar police and will be examining the accused. Their claim needs to be corroborated with facts on the ground... whether they were actually present near the sites on the days of the accidents has to be established,” an NIA official said.
If the claim turned out to be true, it would be the first case of a train derailment in India carried out at the behest of the Pakistani agency, an official said.
Fifteen coaches of the Ajmer-Sealdah Express Train derailed near Rura, around 70 kilometres from Kanpur, on December 28. Though no deaths were reported, 44 persons were injured. Earlier, on November 20, the Indore-Patna Express train derailed near Kanpur killing 145 passengers and injuring several others.
On October 1, a powerful Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was detected on the railway track in Ghorasahan, in East Champaran district, and it was safely defused by the police. “We arrested three persons in the course of our investigation into the incident. They confessed to their involvement and said they were acting on the instructions of some people in foreign countries,” Jitendra Rana, Superintendent of Police, East Champaran, told journalists on Tuesday in Motihari, the district headquarters.
“It is a subject of investigation, but they said their link was also with Pakistan’s ISI.”
It was Paswan, police said, who claimed that the ISI was involved in the Kanpur train accidents and that he and some others from Kanpur had executed the job. Two of his alleged accomplices, Zubair and Ziyaullah, had already been arrested in Delhi.
