Samjhauta Express blast: Separating fact from fiction

On February 18 in 2007, a Hindu right-wing organisation carried out an improvised explosive device (IED) blast in the Samjhauta Express – a train which runs between New Delhi and Lahore – at Panipat in India's Haryana state.

As many as 68 people including 43 Pakistani citizens, 10 Indian citizens and 15 unidentified people were killed in the blast. 12 people including 10 Pakistanis and two Indians were also injured in the terrorist attack.

The Hindu hardliners were quick to blame Muslim groups for it but later on, the country's National Intelligence Agency (NIA) arrested a worker, identified as Kamal Chauhan, of Hindu extremist organisation Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) in New Delhi.

According to the reports, Chauhan was an explosives specialist and he had planted the bomb in the train. Later on, the investigation had revealed that the Hindu activist with several other people had been involved in several other terrorist activities including explosions at the Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Makkah Masjid, and Malegaon.

Read more: Pakistan reiterates demand for justice for Samjhauta Express blast victims

Initially, the Muslims and particularly banned outfits from Pakistan were blamed in all these incidents but later on, Hindu chauvinists confessed their involvement in these acts of terror.

Inspector General Hemant Karkare of Maharashtra Police was the head of investigations. He had identified the Hindutva organisations for terrorism in India.

Interestingly, several political commentators had also called it “Hindutva terror” or the “saffron terror”. The opposition parties at that time, including the current ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena, had alleged that the arrests were made under the pressure of the incumbent government to appease the Indian Muslim population.

The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare was investigating the Malegaon blast of 2006 in which the names of many Hindu hardliners from Sangh Parivar, RSS, BJP, Jagran Munch were included.

The plan was to remove ATS chief Hemant Karkare and to appoint a new ATS chief in order to protect these hardliners from prosecution. Karkare was targeted and killed during the Mumbai 2008 operation.

Karkare earlier denied the involvement of Hindu terrorist organisation saffron, in her husband’s death. It was widely believed that Karkare had received reprisal threats from the RSS just after the Mumbai attack.

Later on, she had filed a case against RAW and Col Prohit in Indian Supreme Court. She had also provided evidence of Col Prohit and RAW involvement in the terror attack.

According to the Inspector General of Police SM Mushrrif, the ATS chief and other officials were not killed by terrorists but by the target killers of Hindutva parties who took advantage of the 26/11 attacks.

It proves that the goons of the Hindu extremist party had killed Karkare and fabricated the evidence to accuse terrorists who were allegedly involved in Mumbai 2008 attack.

It was also reported that Swami Aseemanand, a leader of RSS, was found guilty before a judicial magistrate. Aseemanand and his fellow RSS activists were involved in blasts in Samjhauta Express, at mosques in Malegaon in Maharashtra state and Andhra Pradesh’s state capital, Hyderabad besides a Muslim shrine in Ajmer in Rajasthan.

Col Prohit himself had confessed during the investigation of Samjhauta Express tragedy for giving training to Hindu terrorists to initiate an armed conflict between Pakistan and India.

The statement clearly reflects the sick mentality of the Indian army and its overt and covert support to extremists and moreover infiltration of Hindutva elements into the Indian army and intelligence agencies.

India is exposed to being confronted with the evidence indicating increased activities of a secret Hindu terror network which is responsible for a wave of deadly attacks previously blamed on the Muslims.

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The opposition leader in the Indian parliament, Rahul Gandhi said that the growth of Hindu extremists presents a greater threat to India than the Muslims.

Pakistan had urged India to share findings of the investigation which was conducted for Samjhauta blasts after it was disclosed that Hindu extremist outfits were behind the terrorist activities in February 2007.

It is evident that the historic anti-Pakistan posture of India in general and the Hindutva approach of the BJP government in particular that India had used the 26/11 attack as a propaganda tool against Pakistan.

Swami Aseemanand, a former member of RSS, had been described as the alleged mastermind in the conspiracy. There were eight accused in the case but only four faced the trial.

Swami Aseemanand alias Naba Kumar Sarkar, the prime accused in the case, had been granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2015.

Three accused – Kamal Chauhan, Rajinder Chaudhary and Lokesh Sharma were in judicial custody in Central Jail Ambala. Three accused – Amit Chouhan (Ramesh Venkat Malhakar), Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange have been declared as proclaimed offenders in the case. Another accused Sunil Joshi – NIA calls him the mastermind – was killed in December 2007 in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh.

According to the NIA probe report placed before the trial court, Aseemanand and associates “developed vengeance” against the whole Muslim community.

The accused persons met different persons across the country in order to conspire, plan and chalk out the strategies to execute bomb blasts at or near the Muslim places of worship, places inhabited by Muslims and the Samjhauta Express train which is used by Indian and Pakistani Muslims for travel to each other’s relatives, said the NIA.

Accused Rajender Chaudhary along with Sunil Joshi, Ramchandra Kalsangra, Lokesh Sharma, Kamal Chauhan, Amit and others are said to have attended training at Bagli forest in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh in January 2006 during which the “timer bomb with high explosive” was prepared and demonstrated.

The accused also participated in the firing practice at the Karni shooting range in Faridabad in April 2006.

The train was chosen because there was “no security available at Old Delhi Railway Station,” according to the reconnaissance carried out by the accused. The accused travelled from Indore and stayed in the dormitory room at Old Delhi Railway Station prior to the blast.

Speaking candidly to The Wire, Vikash Narain Rai, a former Haryana police officer who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) from 2007 to early 2010, said the police recovered an unexploded bomb from the train. In the course of investigations, it was found that all the parts of that "incendiary device" were purchased by people linked to the RSS and its associate groups.

Rai said that the trail of evidence took the team to Indore, where RSS member Sunil Joshi and his two accomplices were found to be complicit in the crime. Before they could interrogate Joshi, however, he was murdered.

A special court on March 20, 2019, acquitted Swami Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta train blast case, saying the NIA failed to establish their guilt.

NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh also dismissed the plea of a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country, saying the plea was “devoid of merit.”

The Samjhauta Express bombing was part of a string of similar attacks in 2006 and 2007 where the targets were ostensibly Muslims and investigations by the NIA pointed to the role of Hindu groups.

The first was in September 2006 when a string of explosions was set off at a Muslim cemetery in Malegaon, a town in Maharashtra state, which killed at least 40 people.

In May 2007, a blast in the 400-year-old Makkah Masjid in Hyderabad city killed six people and five more died when the police opened fire on people who launched a spontaneous agitation at the site.

At least two people were killed when a bomb went off at the Ajmer Dargah in the northern state of Rajasthan in 2007.

Swami Aseemanand, who featured prominently in the course of the investigations, had said in a taped interview in 2014 to Indian magazine The Caravan that some of the worst attacks in the country were sanctioned by the then-RSS top leadership.

It has been time and again proved that Indian secret agencies, particularly RAW, arranged coordinated state-sponsored terror attacks to defame Pakistan in the world and to fulfil a number of other sinister aims.

There is a long list of terror attacks planned by Indian security agencies to distort the image of Pakistan and its primary intelligence agency, ISI, linking it with the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

As a responsible country, Pakistan remained committed to providing all cooperation to India in terms of accelerating the Samjhauta Express trial and bringing all perpetrators to justice, but India never adopted a serious attitude. It was due to the Indian non-cooperative attitude justice could not be served.

Pakistan’s actions and successes in the fight against terrorism are unmatchable as it managed its internal instability in a very effective manner. Similarly, Pakistan also rejects and condemns acts of terrorism anywhere in the world including India.

India is facing multiple challenges which include economic downturn, domestic insurgencies, widespread demonstrations, tensions between ethnic groups and religious bigotry. To distract the attention of international and domestic media, the Indian establishment articulately construct and cultivate anti-Pakistan narratives.

The world must take serious note of the fact that the Indian nuclear arsenal has now fallen into the hands of the fascist BJP government which is supported by the well-known extremist organisation RSS and could be used in a false flag operation to blame Pakistan.

The Indian state is rapidly losing the strength of its federation. In actuality, India is a ticking time bomb ready to implode within causing catastrophic consequences for regional and international peace.