3 ISI suspects remanded in police custody in train derailment case

A local court in Bihar’s Motihari on Wednesday remanded three suspected ISI agents in police custody for their role in the November 21 Kanpur train derailment, which claimed as many as 148 lives.

Uma Patel, Mukesh Yadav and Moti Paswan are suspected of planning to target the Indian Railways. NIA and ATS teams are likely to interrogate the suspects.

Though the Motihari police could not corroborate further evidence to link the three with the Kanpur incident, sources said they confessed to planting bombs on the railway tracks at Ghorasan near Motihari.

Motihari SP Jitendra Rana said that following interrogation of the trio, who reportedly worked on behalf of Dubai-based ISI operative Shamshul Hoda, the NIA and ATS were informed.

Uma, Mukesh and Moti were arrested when the police were investigating the murder of two persons, killed for their failure to plant bombs on the tracks at Ghorasan.

“Moti Paswan, during interrogation, told the police that two of his associates Mohan and Sohan Paswan, both residents of Bakhri village in Champaran on the Indo-Nepal border, were killed reportedly by ISI operatives in December after they failed in their mission to cause derailment of the Raxaul-Sitamarhi train,” a senior official told DH. Moti also reportedly told his interrogators that Hoda, a resident of Nepal, has shifted his base to Dubai from where he, at the behest of ISI, chalks out strategies to carry out attacks on India.

A senior railway official in UP said that so far there was no evidence to prove that bombs had been planted on the tracks to derail the Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur on November 20.