That night on the Samjhauta

In the congested market at Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur district,Pratap Chand sits hunched over his sewing machine. “At this age,when I thought Rajinder would be taking care of me,I have to work for my grandchildren,” says Chand,63.

Pictures of his son Rajinder Pal,a constable with the Railway Police,hang on the walls of the shack.

Rajinder,a constable with the Railway Protection Force (RPF),was among the 68 people killed in the February 18,2007 blasts on the Samjhauta Express. He was in the coach where the first blast took place and died on the spot.

Nearly five years after his death,Rajinder’s wife Kamlesh got a job on compassionate grounds at a salary of Rs 12,000. Kamlesh,her three children and her father-in-law Chand live in a two-room house in Qadian Gujran village.

At the entrance of the village,a huge gate erected in Rajinder’s memory bears his picture. “Rajinder was my only son and was only 35 when he died. My brother Sukhdev Raj,who is an inspector in the RPF,broke the news. I lit my son’s pyre,but ever since,I have not been able to attend any funeral. My son is a martyr,but no officer or minister has ever bothered to come to us,” says Chand.

Kamlesh does a 10-hour daily shift at Gurdaspur railway station. “It’s extremely difficult for a woman to be doing night shifts. These terrorists have ruined my family,” says Kamlesh,tears welling up in her eyes.

“We don’t live in New Delhi or any other big city where we can keep track of the investigation. If the police have arrested a bunch of people after five years,God knows how many years the case will linger on.”

Lalit Kumar,TTE on the train-He was escorting an elderly passenger to the general coach

SUMEGHA GULATI

It was the first time that Lalit Kumar,a travel ticket examiner (TTE),had been put on duty on the Samjhauta Express. He never completed the journey.

Five years on,Kumar’s family is yet to come to terms with the loss. His parents’ house in west Delhi’s Old Mahabir Nagar area still wears a solemn look,the walls bare.

“It’s never a man who dies; it’s an entire family. There have been no celebrations in our family since bhaiyya died,” says Kumar’s younger brother Manish.

On February 18,2007,Kumar left for Old Delhi railway station at 8 p.m. “He didn’t want to go. But he eventually went and never came back,” says Manish.

The next morning,as the Kumar family watched news of the attack on TV,they prayed for his safety. The blast,after all,had taken place in the general coach of the train where a TTE is not posted. “It was much later that I heard from someone that a senior citizen had asked for my brother’s help and he had gone to drop him to the general coach. I called up my brother’s colleagues who assured me they had spoken to him over phone. But they insisted I come to Panipat where the blast had taken place.”

Manish left for Panipat with a cousin. They first searched for Kumar at the railway station in Panipat before going to the blast site. “We thought he might have jumped out of the train and become unconscious. We did the rounds of many hospitals and finally found him at the Panipat Civil Hospital amidst scores of burnt bodies,” says Manish. They brought back his body that night.

Though Kumar’s family received a compensation of Rs 10 lakh,they had to make the rounds of many offices before they could get a government job for Kumar’s wife,Anita. Anita now lives a block away with her nine-year old twins and her mother.

Meanwhile,following his death,Kumar’s mother has been under treatment for the past five years for psychological disorders. “She hears voices,people shouting and trying to kill her family,” says Manish.

Yasmeena Akhter,passenger-Her husband was to join her in Pak five days later

BASHAARAT MASOOD

As the Samjhauta Express pulled out of Old Delhi railway station,Mohammad Maqbool Qureshi called out to his wife Yasmeena Akhter and reminded her that he would join her in Rawalpindi,Pakistan,in five days. That was on February 18,2007. A day later,Qureshi returned home to Pantha Chowk in Srinagar with the body of his wife,one of the 68 people killed in the Samjhauta Express blast at Panipat.

Five years later,with the National Investigation Agency arresting Kamal Chauhan,the man who allegedly planted the bombs on the train,Qureshi says he wants the attackers to get the harshest penalty. “That was the biggest tragedy of my life. I can’t get my wife back. But I want the attackers to be put to death. This will save many lives in future.”

Yasmeena,then 47,was travelling to Pakistan to be with their three children—son Nadeem Qureshi and daughters Shabnum Ishtiyaq and Sheeba Ilyas,all married and settled in Rawalpindi in Pakistan.

After seeing Yasmeena off,Qureshi returned to the Delhi hotel where he had checked in for the night. That night on television,he saw images of the blast on the Samjhauta Express and prayed for his wife’s safety. As he reached Panipat early next morning,he could only find the body of his wife.

Five years later,Qureshi,now 60,has moved on,but says he can’t forget the day of the blast. “I had another nikah,” he says. “But that can’t fill the gap. Memories remain.”

Qureshi says he is looking for closure. “If need be,I will fight the case in court.”

Kashmir Singh,RPF ASI-He died in the stampede that followed

Varinder Bhatia

On the night of February 18,2007,Assistant Sub Inspector Kashmir Singh was heading the security team of six RPF personnel on the Samjhauta Express. Close to midnight,when the bombs went off in the two coaches,Singh was in another coach. He rushed to the burning coaches and started pulling out people trapped in the fire. Singh died in the stampede that followed. The 49-year-old had no burn injuries on his body.

“People told us how he didn’t care for his life as he rushed into the burning coaches and saved people,” says Hardeep Singh,Singh’s 25-year-old son.

In 2008,Hardeep Singh,an engineering graduate,got a job in the Railways on compassionate grounds. He now lives with his wife,his year-old son,mother and brother at the family’s ancestral house in village Mohkamwala in Ferozepur district. Hardeep says his father had served the RPF for over 23 years.

“I don’t know who carried out these blasts,whether they were Hindus,Muslims or someone else. But whoever did this should be put to death. I am alive just to see what happens to my husband’s killers. How long will the government take to solve the case,” asks Singh’s wife Manjit Kaur,50.

Singh’s younger son,Sarabjit Singh,is a final year student at a college in Ferozepur district. He has his doubts about the investigation. “It is a meaningless exercise. After five years,they start arresting people and blame them. Why would anyone believe that? At least we don’t. Nobody has ever contacted us or kept us informed about the progress in the investigation. Don’t we deserve to know?”

Eyewitness account-Rukhsana,survivor-‘Whoever could,jumped out of the moving train’

SUMEGHA GULATI

Rukhsana was 20 when she boarded the Samjhauta Express at Old Delhi railway station on February 18,2007 with her mother and two elder brothers. They were going to meet her aunt in Pakistan’s Gujranwala city.

Now 25 and a mother of two,Rukhsana says it’s difficult to forget that journey five years ago. “Since my father Abdul Sattar’s death nine years ago,we had never visited his sister who lives in Pakistan. That day,I boarded the train with my mother and brothers Iqbal and Zaheer,” says Rukhsana.

At night,they noticed smoke in the train and heard cries of people. “There were bodies all around when the train halted. We could see young and old lying on the ground,covered in blood. Many,who could manage,jumped off the moving train into the dense jungle on both sides. The cries did not stop for a long time. But since our coach was in the front,it wasn’t damaged and we escaped unhurt,” she says.

Samjhauta halted at Panipat station for at least three hours,during which the damaged bogies were removed and rescue operations carried out. “The rest of the passengers were then carried safely till Attari. When we reached Pakistan,our passports and visas were checked. A large number of Pakistani police officials,politicians and TV channels had gathered around the station,” remembers Rukhsana.

The family returned to India a month later,on March 26. Rukhsana married a Meerut-based businessman a year later. As she rocks her daughter to sleep,Rukhsana says,“It was just our fate that saved us that day. We were just a few coaches away from death.”

‘Blast suspect sees himself as hero’

Rahul tripathi

The arrest of Kamal Chauhan,a former RSS worker,five years after the Samjhauta Express blast,shows that the investigators may still have a lot of ground to cover. The National Investigation Agency (NIA),which took over the Samjhauta blast case in 2010,took almost two years to identify Chauhan as one of the bombers who planted explosives on the train.

All this while,Chauhan had been living in his Moorkheda village near Indore,where he owned several acres of land and was popularly called Bhaisaheb. The investigators described Chauhan,in his late 20s,as someone of “tough physical and mental build”. “He showed no signs of remorse; instead,he thinks of himself as a hero,” says a senior NIA official.

After the arrest of Swami Aseemanand,the NIA had claimed that the blast was the handiwork of saffron terror outfits. The other key suspects—Sandeep Dange,Ramchandra Kalsangra and Ashok alias Ashwini Chauhan—are still on the run while Sunil Joshi is dead. It was Swami Aseemanand who floated a “bomb ka badla bomb” theory to avenge the attacks on Hindu temples.

During his school days,Chauhan was a regular at RSS shakhas. It was in one of these shakhas that he reportedly met Dange. After he failed to clear his class VIII,he dropped out of school and stopped going to RSS shakhas,but he kept in touch with Dange.

Chauhan reportedly told his investigators that the bombs used on the train were brought to Delhi by different people. He was tasked with carrying one of the bombs from Indore on train. Before deciding to plant the explosives,Chauhan,along with 10 others,attended regular training sessions at the Bagli-Dewas camp in Madhya Pradesh. At the first training programme in January 2006,Kalsangra allegedly trained Chauhan and others on using bombs. Chauhan also claimed that they were made to fire using air pistols and .32 pistols.

To coordinate the attacks,three groups were formed. The first was of people who would motivate youths for the missions and provide shelter,the second of members who would procure raw materials for fabricating the bombs,and the third to plant them. Chauhan and others who were trained at the Dewas camp were part of the third group.

Case so far

February 19,2007: Unidentified men bomb Samjhauta Express,a biweekly train connecting Delhi to Lahore. The bombs go off in two coaches just after the train leaves Diwana station near Panipat. Most of the 68 dead are Pakistanis.

November 18,2010: Swami Aseemanand,arrested by the CBI from Hardwar,confesses to the role of Hindu extremists in a string of terror attacks. NIA records his statement,during which he confesses that they had planned to carry out bomb attacks on Muslim shrines and on the Samjhauta. He later retracts his statements. 

June 20,2011: NIA files chargesheet against Swami Aseemanand,Devendra Gupta,Lokesh Sharma,Sandeep Dange,Ramji Kalsangra,Ashwini Chauhan and Sunil Joshi for the attacks.

February 12,2012: NIA arrests Kamal Chauhan and claims he was among those who planted bombs on the train.