Pakistan's ISI may have engineered train accidents to avenge surgical strikes

PATNA: Security agencies are investigating the claims of the three Bihar criminals arrested in connection with two train accidents last year that the same were engineered by Pakistan's spy agency ISI to avenge the Indian Army's surgical strikes in Pak-Occupied Kashmir on September 29. Over 150 passengers were killed after Indore-Patna Express and Sealdah-Ajmer Express trains had derailed near Kanpur.

Umashankar Patel, Motilal Paswan and Mukesh Yadav were arrested from Motihari on Tuesday for allegedly placing a cooker bomb on the railway track near Ghorasahan station in Bihar on October 1. However, upon interrogation, they confessed that they had also planted explosives which led to the derailment of the two trains near Kanpur. The trio was picked up after the arrest of their ISI handler, Brijkishore Giri, and two others, Shambhu Giri and Mujahir Ansari, in Nepal.

Giri was funded by ISI operative Shamsul Huda, a fellow Nepalese who had gone to Dubai two years ago, to carry out subversive activities in India through local agents. Nepal has already initiated the process for Huda's extradition from Dubai.

An intelligence officer who was among those who interrogated the Bihar criminals told TOI: "Umashankar told us that soon after the surgical strike, Giri asked his team to do something immediately to avenge it."

Meanwhile, the Bihar criminals' handlers arrested in Nepal have also indicated to the police there that the Kanpur derailments were engineered to avenge the surgical strikes. "Ansari has told Nepalese interrogators that they were asked by Huda on phone on September 29 to do something big," Inspector Arun Kumar Kushwaha, posted in the office of Bara district SP in Nepal told TOI on phone.