The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a charge sheet against nine persons, including two Nepalese men, for planting a pressure cooker bomb on a railway track at Ghorasan in Mothari district of Bihar last year.
The charge sheet does not say the accused were involved in the derailment of the Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur on November 20 last year, killing hundreds of passengers. While the initial probe suggested “fatigue of railway track” as the cause of the accident, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu wrote to Home Minister Rajnath Singh alleging “sabotage.”
During an election rally in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, on February 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the accident was “a conspiracy and conspirators carried it out sitting across the border”.
In January, the Bihar Police arrested Moti Paswan, Uma Shanker Patel and Mukesh Yadav for allegedly planting the bomb on the railway track at Ghorasan on October 1, 2016. The bomb was defused and Paswan told the Bihar Police that he planted the explosives at the instance of his Nepalese handlers, who were working for the ISI.
ISI hand
Paswan also said that the ISI was involved in the Kanpur train accident and he and two others had travelled to the accident site to place the IED.
The U.P. police had then denied that any explosives were found at the railway track. The case was transferred to the NIA, which interrogated two accused in the custody of the Nepal police. “Investigation brought out that the accused Shamsul Hoda, a Nepalese citizen, along with Mohammad Shafi, a resident of Pakistan, were the main conspirators, along with Brij Kishore Giri, a Nepalese. Hoda entered into a conspiracy with Shafi and others, to carry out a series of terrorist acts in India,” the charge sheet said.
