Law Kumar Mishra
Patna, June 25
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday took over the investigation of the June 17 explosion in platform number 1 of Darbhanga station.
A six-member team of NIA reached Darbhanga in the morning and visited the platform and parcel office. Later they examined the papers related to investigations conducted by Government Railway Police.
An FIR has been registered at Lucknow branch office of NIA against unknown persons. Bihar comes under Lucknow zone of NIA.
Anti-Terrorist Squads of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Telangana had been investigating the case till now. Three people, two-Haji Kasim and his son Kafeel from Kairana in Shamli district of UP and one Md Iqbal Khan have been arrested so far in the case.
A parcel containing garments was sent from Secunderabad station in Telangana on June 15 to Darbhanga. Both the consigner and the consignee were named as Mohammad Sofiyan and Rs 296 was paid as parcel fee for transportation in the Secunderabad-Darbhanga express train.
As the parcel was being offloaded at Darbhanga station on June 17 and taken to the parcel office, an explosion took place. On investigation, a bottle containing liquid with explosive materials was found. Bag of garments was burnt and the impact of the explosion was minimised causing harm to none.
A team of deputy SP of GRP,Darbhganga was sent to Secunderabad station where investigations led to arrest of Iqbal Khan,as he had booked the parcel on a fake address of both consigner and consignee. He had used the phone number of Shamli based Haji Kasim for delivery. Police collected details of all parcels sent from Secunderabad to Darbhanga in the last six months.
Preliminary investigations by the ATS of three states led to suspicion of ISI in the Darbhanga station blast. A few months back, Mohammad Javed a resident of Marhoura in Saran was arrested by Jammu police on charges of supplying arms to J&K terrorists. His link was found with Darbhanga blasts. He is alleged to be a handler on behalf of ISI.
Three blasts in quick succession of a fortnight at Banka, Darbhanga and Saran led the state police to hand over the investigations to the NIA., – In a blast in a mosque in Banka, the teacher of Madarasa was killed and mosque was heavily damaged as explosives were kept inside the mosque. In Saran, one Vinod Manjhi of Hussainabad was injured when the explosive exploded in his bag. He told the police, the bag with explosives was given to him by a co-villager, Sagir.
Ajai Narain Nishad, BJP MP from Muzaffarpur on Friday alleged mosques and madrasas were being misused for propagation of Islamic studies only and hatred in the society. He demanded investigations into the functioning of all Madrasas.
