Train Attack: CBI arrests PCPA activist

KOLKATA: CBI has arrested an activist of the Maoist-backed People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities ( PCPA) from a village in Jhargram in connection with the Gyaneshwari Express derailment, police said on Tuesday.

Hiralal Mahato was produced in the additional chief judicial magistrate’s court after on Tuesday his arrest on Monday. Mahato is a resident of Rasua village near Sardiha, the site of the train derailment. 148 persons were killed when the Gyaneswari Express derailed on May 28.

The police had on June 4 seized a pickup van, claimed to have been used to ferry men who sabotaged the railway tracks leading to the derailment.

The husband of the vehicle owner was arrested and remanded in police custody for 10 days. The van was registered in the name of Chhabi Mahato, a former CPM panchayat member of Sardiha. Her husband Khagen Mahato was arrested by CID sleuths from Kharagpur town in West Midnapore district.

According to CID sources, Mahato had used the van to ferry the saboteurs to the tracks at around 10:00 pm on May 27, hours before the disaster. A mobile phone from which Mahato made a number of calls that night was also seized, they said.