Terror Link In The Kanpur Train Wreck?

Was the Pukhrayan rail accident in November 2016, which killed 150 people, an act of sabotage? The NIA sees a terror hand

- Amitabh Srivastava

It was around 3 am in the morning and the Indore-Patna Express was barrelling down the tracks at 110 kmph through Pukhrayan in Kanpur Dehat district when train driver Jalat Sharma felt a massive shudder pulsing through the locomotive. Sharma immediately slammed on the emergency brakes located at the back of his seat but it was too late. For the thousand-odd passengers onboard, it must have felt like a massive tremor. Fourteen coaches shot off the tracks, two of them climbing atop each other. The silence of the night was broken by the wails of hapless victims. The November 20, 2016, train mishap at Pukhrayan section, 60 km from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, was India’s worst accident in over a decade, killing 150 people and putting the focus again, it seemed, on the railways’ creaky, outdated infrastructure.

That is, until January 15, when the police in East Champaran, Bihar’s second largest district, had a startling breakthrough. Police in the district bordering Nepal arrested a criminal gang who spilled the beans on what officials now believe is a sinister Inspired plot to target India’s rail infrastructure using petty criminals. The Indore-Patna Express derailment, the Bihar police say, was no mishap; it was sabotage by a shadowy terror network based out of India, Nepal and Pakistan.

The Bihar police have linked the Kanpur blasts to three other foiled attempts to target passenger trains in the state—at Ghorasahan in East Champaran district on October 1, at Nakardei in the same district on December 2 and Buxar on February 6.