The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has sent out a letter to police chiefs of all States cautioning them that the railways continue to be “a soft target for the terrorist and extremist organisations.”
The caution came even though a series of derailments occurred due to “manual error” including the August 20 Utkal Express accident, where 23 people were killed.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is investigating the Kanpur and Kuneru train accidents has not been able to establish any sabotage even as it awaits a report from a team comprising experts from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).
The Indore-Patna Express derailed near Kanpur on November 20 last year, killing more than 140 passengers. While the initial probe suggested “fatigue of railway tracks” as the cause of the accident, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu shot off a letter to Home Minister Rajnath Singh alleging “sabotage.”
During an election rally in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh on February 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the Kanpur accident was “a conspiracy and conspirators carried it out sitting across the border.”
Mr. Singh had to clarify in Parliament on March 22 that the “Prime Minister did not directly mention the ISI’s name in the Kanpur train derailment case.”
The RPF sent the letter to all States on August 11 saying it wanted to “draw attention to the suspected [acts of] sabotage in the Indian Railways.”
To support its claim that terrorist threats loomed large over the railways, the RPF mentioned an incident reported on August 10 in the Kolkata-Amritsar Akal Takht Express. “A suspected bomb was found by a passenger inside the toilet of B3 coach. The train was immediately stopped at Akbarganj in Uttar Pradesh. The bomb squad removed the suspected article. The recovered article has been confirmed as a bomb containing 500 gm of gunpowder. It is learnt that two cigarette lighters and one paper slip written in Hindi containing anti-national text was also recovered,” the letter said.
It said that recently a suspected Islamic State module responsible for a blast on the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train was unearthed by the Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh police.
The NIA recently filed a charge sheet against four men for allegedly planting the bomb on the passenger train where 10 people were injured. The charge sheet said the accused were inspired by the Islamist organisation.
“Specific intelligence inputs also indicate that the forces inimical to the State have contemplated to cause sabotage on mail/express/passenger trains with a sinister move of causing loss to human lives,” the letter said.