NEW DELHI: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday requested the Union Home Ministry to hand over the probe into the East Champaran case with preliminary investigation pointing to the role of ISI in terror hits on railway infrastructure in India including the derailment of a train near Kanpur last year.
NIA sources told the Express that a letter has been sent to the Home Ministry seeking transfer of the case to the agency from Bihar Police.
Earlier this week, Bihar Police had revealed that the ISI was behind recent train derailments and the Pak covert agency had used the Nepal route to target the Indian Railways.
Joint interrogation of the arrested criminals including Uma Shankar Patel, Mukesh Yadav and Moti Paswan has confirmed the ISI plot to directly fund terror attacks in the hinterland. Interrogation by the officials of the RAW’s desk in Patna and those from the Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau (SIB) in the State capital besides the NIA team revealed an elaborate network of funding put in place by the ISI in Nepal to execute terror attacks in India via the Himalayan nation.
The Centre has also directed the RAW station in Kathmandu to unravel the sinister ISI plot to hit targets in the hinterland by exploiting the open Indo-Nepal border. The Union Home Ministry has also directed the Sasashtra Seema Bal that guards the Indo-Nepal and Indo-Bhutan borders to keep a strict vigil at the border under its jurisdiction, a senior North Block official said.
The trio was in touch with ISI agents Brajesh Giri and Shamsul Hoda who were operating out of Nepal and had received Rs 30 lakh from the Pak covert agency to carry out terror attacks on trains passing from Bihar.
The trio had told the Bihar police sleuths that derailment of Indore-Patna express last year was the handiwork of ISI following which the IB, RAW and NIA officials also joined the questioning of the criminals.
Paswan, Patel and Yadav arrested from East Champaran district last week told the Bihar police that they received Rs 3 lakh from Giri to plant explosives/IEDs at Ghorasahan railway station in the district limits on October 1. The Bihar police has claimed to have recovered IEDs at the instance of the arrested accused persons.
A senior Union Home Ministry official said the NIA request is being considered and a decision will be taken soon to hand over the probe to the anti-terror agency. Once the Centre notifies the NIA probe into the claims made by the trio, the anti-terror agency will register a case and collect the materials gathered so far from the Bihar police for further investigation.
The trio, according to Bihar police claims, have ‘confessed’ about the ISI's possible role in the last year's derailment near Kanpur in which 150 persons were killed and about 200 others sustained injuries.
The Intelligence agencies have mounted a surveillance operation to nab two other suspects--Gajendra Sharma and Rakesh Yadav—hailing from East Champaran for their role in the latest ISI terror strategy, sources added.