In a sensational claim, the Bihar police, which was investigating the derailment of the Indore-Patna Express near Pukhrayan in Kanpur that left over 150 people dead, has claimed that there was a possible ISI (Pakistan’s intelligence agency) hand behind the “accident”.
In the early hours of November 20th, train number 19321 going from Indore to Patna had derailed but the cause remained unclear. The railway authorities first suspected a possible rail fracture behind the accident. But providing a completely new angle to this, SP Jitendra Rana said that the police had arrested three people in connection with an IED recovered from the outer tracks of the Ghorasahan railway station on Oct 1 2016. After intense interrogation, the suspects confessed that Pakistan had hatched a conspiracy to derail the fourteen coaches of Indore-Patna Express.
They claimed that an IED blast was the cause of the derailment and that ISI, with monetary help from Dawood Ibrahim, was behind the attack. According to this report, three men – Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar Patel and Mukesh Yadav – were arrested from Adapur Police area and were reportedly paid 3 lakh rupees to plant the IED near Ghorasahan railway station by a Nepali citizen Brajesh Giri who had ISI links.
So if these confessions are true, not just was the ISI involved in the Indore-Patna train accident in November, it had been trying to target Railways on other occasions too such as planting the IED in October. Only further investigation would reveal as to the involvement of ISI in other recent derailments. It should be noted that even the Railways Minister had earlier hinted at possible sabotage behind recent train accidents.
This isn’t the only case for which the ISI has been in the news recently. Ajit Doval had claimed yesterday that the terrorists behind the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 in Kandahar were also actively supported by the ISI.
