Motihari men owned up sabotage: police

KANPUR TRAIN DERAILMENT

THE THREE men arrested by Bihar Police on Tuesday have confessed to their involvement in the Kanpur train mishap in November that killed more than 140 people, investigators said on Wednesday.

The three were arrested on charges of a double-murder in the district, and on suspicion over their role in an attempt to blow up a railway track at Ghorasahan, in East Champaran district of Bihar in October last year. They confessed to alleged involvement in the Kanpur train accident during subsequent interrogation, officers said.

A local court on Wednesday sent the trio — Moti Paswan, Dayashanker Patel and Mukesh Yadav — to six days’ custody of East Champaran police. The three, now undergoing joint interrogation by officers of Bihar Police, Uttar Pradesh Antiterrorism Squad (ATS) and Delhi Police’s Special Cell, are suspected to be part of a Nepalbased international gang with alleged links to Pakistan’s ISI.

They have told interrogators that they had been “assigned to blow up the railway track” near Kanpur.

The Indore-patna Express derailed near Pokhrayan in Kanpur Dehat early on November 20.

Sources in UP ATS said that Moti Paswan on Tuesday told Bihar police that two men from Delhi — Zubair and Ziaul — had approached him and called him to Kanpur Dehat before the accident. They met him with four other local youths. Sources said Paswan has not yet stated when they met, or what transpired in the meeting. He reportedly claimed that Ziaul and Zubair took him near the tracks and “did something” there. He has so far claimed that he does not know more details since he, along with the other locals, were not taken too close to the tracks.

Based on information from Bihar Police, the Special Cell on Tuesday detained two men from Batla House area of southeast Delhi and verified their identity as Ziaul and Zubair by sending their photographs to Bihar.

Bihar police officials said Paswan, Patel and Yadav — all three come from Motihari — were arrested primarily in connection with the murder of locals Anil Ram and Deepak Ram. The police later found that the deceased were members of a Nepal gang with ISI links, and that they had been killed allegedly for their failure to blowupthetracksatghodasahan on October 1 last year.

Partha Paul Family members of Alam Mollah, who died during Tuesday’s protest, in Bhangar, West Bengal, on Wednesday.

PTI The suspects after their arrest in Motihari on Tuesday.