15 years on, victims of Samjhauta tragedy still await justice
In February 2007, bomb blasts tore through two carriages of the Samjhauta Express as it travelled past Panipat towards Amritsar. PHOTO: FILE
The Samjhauta Express tragedy was a false flag operation of India staged by Hindu extremists to sabotage efforts of Pakistan for regional peace, while the families of the victims are still awaiting justice, as the justice system of India only protected the interests of Hindu fundamentalists.
According to political analysts, Samjhauta Express tragedy was a farce staged by India with the aim to derail the peace process between Pakistan and India. The incident made it evident that Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janta Party were patronising Hindu extremists.
The attack was carried out one day before the planned visit of then foreign minister of Pakistan Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri. Kasuri was to arrive in New Delhi to restart the peace process between Pakistan and India.
On February 18, 2007, an improvised explosive device (IED) blast was carried out in the Samjhauta train, which ran between New Delhi and Lahore, at Panipat in Haryana. The incident had claimed 68 lives, including 43 Pakistani nationals, 10 Indian citizens and 15 unidentified persons.
Read: Samjhauta Express blast: Separating fact from fiction
About 12 others, including 10 Pakistanis and two Indians, were also injured in the attack. Initially, a Muslim group was blamed for the incident, but later, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) arrested Kamal Chauhan of the RSS in New Delhi.
Chauhan was an explosives specialist, who had planted the bomb in the train. The investigations revealed that the Hindu activist and several other persons had been involved in other blasts at Ajmer Dargah, Hyderabad’s Makkah Masjid and Malegaon.
Head of Maharashtra Police Inspector General Hemant Karkare and several political commentators had called the incident “Hindutva terror” or the “Saffron terror”. Later, Karkare was targeted and killed during the 2008 Mumbai operation.
It was also reported that Swami Aseemanand, an RSS leader, was found guilty before a judicial magistrate for his involvement in the attack on Samjhauta Express, and mosques in Malegaon in Maharashtra state and Andhra Pradesh’s state capital Hyderabad, besides a Muslim shrine in Ajmer.
Indian Army Col Prohit himself had confessed to have trained Hindu terrorists to initiate an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. The opposition leader in the Indian parliament Rahul Gandhi confirmed that the growth of Hindu extremists presented a greater threat to India than the Muslims.
Pakistan had urged India to share findings of the investigation into the Samjhauta train blasts after it was disclosed that Hindu extremist outfits were behind the terrorist activities in February 2007.
Vikash Narain Rai, who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) from 2007 to early 2010, said the police recovered an unexploded bomb from the train. It was found that all the parts of that ‘incendiary device’ were purchased by the people linked to the RSS and its associate groups.
A special court on March 20, 2019 acquitted Aseemanand and three others in the case. NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh also dismissed the plea of a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country.
In fact, India had been using similar incidents to lay a basis for the false-flag operations against Pakistan, which had also been proved in many other instances to deceive its public about the culprits and perpetrators.