NEW DELHI: The Union Home Ministry is actively considering a plea from the National Investigation Agency to handover the Ghorasahan (Motihari) case from Bihar Police to it for investigation even as the agency team on Monday inspected the accident site of Hirakhand Express in Vizianagaram, in which 39 people lost their lives on Saturday, to ascertain if it was a terror act.
Agency sources said the NIA team comprising officials from Delhi and Hyderabad is probing if the accident occurred due to a terror angle or was merely a result of technical failure or human error. The NIA team’s visit was intended to draw preliminary inferences and decide whether the case should be taken up by the agency, the sources further said, a report on the findings will be handed over to the Ministry.
Following suspicion of sabotage in the Hirakhand Express, the Union Home Ministry is mulling over to hand over the probe to the Central anti-terror investigation agency.
A senior North Block official said the Ministry is examining the NIA request for taking over the Ghorasahan probe and the Hirakhand Express derailment case. However, a final decision is yet to be taken.
Three persons arrested by the Bihar police earlier this month---Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar Patel and Mukesh Yadav---had claimed that derailment of Indore-Patna train on November 20 last year near Kanpur was caused due to sabotage by Pakistan's ISI. As many as 150 passengers lost their lives due to the derailment of the Indore-Patna Express train and 39 persons were killed in the Hirakhand Express train derailment at Vizianagaram district of Andhra Pradesh.