NEW DELHI: The security and Intelligence agencies are baffled over the revelation by the three persons arrested by Bihar police that the derailment of Indore-Patna Express was the handiwork of Pakistan’s covert agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and have rushed their sleuths to the State to quiz the accused persons.
While the Union Home Ministry has rushed a two-member team of National Investigation Agency (NIA) to Bihar, officials of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have also joined the interrogation of the accused persons in order to unravel the larger conspiracy involving ISI agents operating out of Nepal and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Union Home Ministry has also sought reports from the Bihar Government and the IB in connection with the arrest of Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar and Mukesh Yadav and their disclosures to Bihar Police. The Centre has also sought a report from RAW about ISI activities in Nepal and India besides UAE. Both the Patna desk and Nepal mission of RAW have been asked to closely track the issue, top Government sources said.
The role of the ISI and their agents is being probed by the agencies even as the sleuths are verifying the claims of the arrested persons. If the trio’s claim is confirmed, the train derailment would be the first case wherein the ISI agents have directly acted to carry out a terror plot within the Indian territory, a senior Union Home Ministry official said, adding in earlier cases the ISI used to use its proxies like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad to hit targets in the hinterland.
This could also be the first of its kind case in which Hindus have been directly used by the ISI to carry out terror attacks and that too on railway infrastructure, the official further said.
An Intelligence source said the linkages between the ISI and international terror group Street Daawah is also being probed. Street Daawah is active in the Terai region of Nepal and recruits non-Muslims for its terror agenda including suicide bombings.
The Bihar police had arrested Paswan, Shankar and Yadav on Tuesday from East Champaran district and the trio told the district police that it was paid Rs 3 lakh to plant explosives at Ghorasahan in the district on October 1, 2016.
They also told the police that ISI agents had paid Rs 30 lakh to its agent Brajesh Giri for triggering blasts on rail tracks targeting popular trains in Bihar, the official said.
The Intelligence agencies are now in the lookout for two more suspects Gajendra Sharma and Rakesh Yadav hailing from the district for their alleged links with the arrested accused.
Following the revelations by the Bihar Police, the role of ISI in recent train derailments in Kanpur is also being suspected. The Bihar police had on Tuesday claimed that the ISI link to the November 20 train derailment in Kanpur is being suspected after questioning of the trio. As many as 150 passengers were killed in the Indore-Patna Express train disaster.