Kochi: The eerie coincidence in two train arson cases reported from Kerala in the last couple of months has prompted the National Investigating Agency (NIA) to find out any common links. A coach of the same Alappuzha-Kannur Executive Express was targeted on both occasions at night.
The first incident occurred on the moving train at Elathur on April 2 and the latest on the same train at Kannur railway station on Thursday. Three people were killed in the first incident.
A statement given by arrested Delhi native Shahrukh Saifi, who is the accused in the Elathur case, has prompted the NIA team to swiftly intervene in the latest case too.
“It will be executed either by me or somebody else,” Saifi had reportedly told his interrogators. The NIA investigators suspect a terror network is behind the arson cases.
The NIA expects crucial leads in the Elathur case with the interrogation of the accused in the Kannur train torching case.
A West Bengal native, identified as Pushanjit Sidgar (40) was taken into custody following the latest train arson. The cops obtained CCTV visuals of a man with a bottle of fuel approaching the stationary train in the wee hours of Thursday.
The fingerprints collected from the gutted coach matched that of Pushanjit, they confirmed.
NIA intensifies probe
The NIA team, which conducted extensive searches in Bihar and Karnataka in the past few days in the terrorist recruitment case registered by it, also conducted raids in Kasaragod, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Thiruvananthapuram districts of Kerala on Tuesday.
The NIA Directorate has instructed this team to stay put in Kerala. They also interacted with the NIA team of the Kochi unit which is investigating the Elathur case.
Sharukh Saifi remanded
Saifi was remanded yesterday by a special court for another two weeks. At the request of the defendant, the defendant's mental and physical health will be examined by a medical board consisting of experts. There would be four doctors, including two mental health experts, in the team.
Shahrukh had complained of severe abdominal pain as well.
The two coach torchings
On the night of April 2, 27-year-old Shahrukh Saifi, a native of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, barged into the D1 compartment of the Executive Express around 9.15 pm, carrying a bottle of petrol. He sprayed the fuel on the passengers and lit the fire when the train reached Korapuzha bridge near Elathur. Three people died and nine others sustained burns following the incident.
Though no one died in the train arson incident in the wee hours of Thursday, a major tragedy was averted with the fire force brigades quickly dousing the flames. The gutted coach was just 100 meters away from a fuel storage tank of the BPCL.
