The Bihar police is linking two deadly train derailments near Kanpur in 2016 to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's spy agency. These two tragedies in November and December claimed the lives of 150 people and injured over 200.
The Bihar police suspect that three men, Umashankar Patel, Motilal Paswan and Mukesh Yadav, who belong to East Champaran, were working for Brij Kishore Giri, a citizen of Nepal and an alleged ISI agent, The Times of India reported today. District SP (Superintendent of Police) Jitender Rana told TOI that one of the criminals had confessed that he was involved in planting explosives to derail the the Indore-Patna Express and Ajmer-Sealdah Express trains near Kanpur, last year.
The three men were allegedly involved in placing a cooker bomb on the railway track near Ghorasahan in East Champaran district on 1 October (a third incident)."Fortunately, the bomb at Ghorasahan was detected with the help of villagers and defused," Rana told TOI.
The Bihar police say that the three men, who were recently arrested on the India-Nepal border, received ₹3 lakh from Giri, who along with two other men Shambhu Giri and Mujahir Ansari have been arrested by the Nepal police. "The Nepal police have shared vital information with us regarding their ISI links," Rana told TOI.
The Indore-Patna Express derailment claimed the lives of more than 150 people and injured over 200, and at least 60 people were injured when the Ajmer-Sealdah Express went off the tracks near the Roora railway station in Kanpur.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is now following up on the Bihar police's investigation. "If our preliminary conclusions vet the ISI-link theory, there is a possibility of NIA taking over the investigation," an NIA official told TOI.
A central counter-terror official told The Hindustan Times that one of the arrested men had confessed to planting a pressure cooker-based improvised explosive device near the railway track in Kanpur, but his confession had to be verified by independent corroboratory evidence." "They claim to have done it for money," the official told the newspaper.
HT reported that the UP anti-terrorist squad and the NIA suspect that the three men were handled by Shamshul Hoda, a citizen of Nepal, who may have ISI links. The anti-terror agencies are likely to further interrogate the three men.
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