| The bright, brick-red Old Delhi railway station in the heart of the Capital represents the almost endemic nature of train travel in India. The station is filthy and overcrowded and security is primitive to the point of being non-existent. It is also the starting point for the Samjhauta Express, symbolically the subcontinent's most important train. But you wouldn't know it from platform No 18, where the train departs for Lahore every Sunday and Wednesday. The station is monitored by 20 close-circuit TV cameras but there are none to watch over this sensitive platform where the train departs twice a week, at 10.50 p.m., for its 400-km journey to Attari on the India-Pakistan border before it crosses over to reach Lahore at 6.30 p.m. the next day, after a 20-hour journey. There are not even any sniffer dogs to warn of potential explosives that might be stuffed in luggage. The platform has six access points but only three are guarded by Railway Protection Force (RPF) constables. Passengers, mainly Pakistanis going back home after visiting their relatives in India, are supposed to show their passports before obtaining a ticket, but you can get one anyway. No surprise then that at least four terrorists slipped in to plant four incendiary bombs, each in a different coach of the train, before it departed on February 18.  | | WHERE THEY FAILED | | | Terror slipped past them undetected. Lulled into complacency by the apparently safe train, here's how the railway police missed it all. AT OLD DELHI RAILWAY STATION No frisking of luggage The most crucial lapse which allowed the bombers to place the explosives in the train. Only three of the six entry points to the platform were guarded. There was no access control, and anyone could approach the train. No CCTVs covering platform 18 As in the London train bombings of July 2005, footage from the cameras could have helped investigators identify the four bombers as they boarded the train in Old Delhi with their deadly briefcases. Tickets issued without checking passports Though it is mandatory to check passports and note details before passengers board the train, ticket clerks sold at least five tickets without checking passports.
EN ROUTE TO ATTARI Only 5 RPF personnel on the train Insufficient to guard the 16-coach train. Well-trained and equipped personnel could have detected the bombers while they attempted to escape after planting explosives. Two suspects allowed to get off A Pakistani passenger Usman says at least four persons got off the train before the blasts. RPF personnel detained and then allowed two other persons, now suspected to be the bombers, to alight minutes before the blasts. | | Less than an hour later, the sum of this security bungling exploded in two fire balls as the train sped down with 600 passengers towards Panipat in Haryana at 90 kmph. The two local bombs turned 68 passengers and two coaches of the 16-coach train into crisp toast. Investigating agencies which suspect a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) hand, say the modus operandi-four Molotov cocktails packed in innocuous suitcases-was almost as old as the terrorists' choice of target, a passenger train. The intent was to torch four coaches of the train and cause mass casualties while the passengers were asleep. It was a small consolation that two of the briefcases packed with 14 kerosene-filled plastic bottles, which were to be triggered by detonators attached to timers, did not go off. The unexploded bombs, one of them flung out by a passenger minutes before it exploded, have given the investigating agencies their first leads. "We did not have the machines to check inside the bags," said Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav. Not frisking bags even physically was only the first in a series of criminal lapses. Half an hour before the explosion, RPF personnel on board detected two illegal travellers who said they were bound for Ahmedabad and had got onboard by mistake. They were allowed to get off a few kilometres before the train approached Diwana station, where the bombs went off. Police now believe they were among the group of at least four bombers, but it didn't occur to the RPF personnel-two of them were killed in the blast-that the train only halted once near Ambala. The terrorists, who had obviously studied the route of the train, including the places where it slowed down, knew where to get off. | | Why Peace Stays on Track | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | UNITY IN ADVERSITY: Mukherjee (left) and Kasuri | | | The two sides have agreed not to use the Samjhauta firebombing to play a game of one-upmanship. | | With both India and Pakistan being hit by a string of attacks such as the one on Samjhauta Express, they now need to fight terror together Tragedy can be a big unifier, even in a trust-deficient bilateral relationship like the one between India and Pakistan. Following the Samjhauta Express bombing that killed 68 innocent civilians, it seems that for once the two countries are seeing eye to eye on terrorism, an issue that has been the biggest impediment in the dialogue process. The two countries continued their engagement even after the blasts. On February 21, after a joint commission meeting between External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmud Kasuri, an agreement to avoid nuclear accidents was inked. It was apparent that the terror attack notwithstanding, both sides were committed to steering the peace process forward. "The Government of India will make every effort to bring to justice the perpetrators of the heinous crime," declared Mukherjee, as his Pakistani counterpart concurred, hoping that "India will be able to share the evidence" with Pakistan. The blast has changed the security landscape of the region. It is perhaps for the first time that innocent Pakistani nationals have been killed in a terror attack on Indian territory. It has also reinforced India's consistent argument that the two countries have a shared interest in combating terrorism. While India has been a victim of a string of bomb attacks, Pakistan, too, has been hit by such attacks. This amplifies the urgency of taking effective measures. Clearly it was not just a stray act of terrorism, but a well-planned one. Samjhauta is more than just a train. It derives its name from the Simla Agreement signed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi and the then Pakistani president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in 1972. The train was targeted to cause maximum bloodshed and to create a rift in the peace process. This has come at a time when terrorist groups are increasingly getting marginalised, with India and Pakistan focusing on talks in Kashmir. The attack was aimed at sabotaging the people-to-people dialogue that has yielded much better results than political initiatives. While there was widespread condemnation of the blast and the world stood united, the resilience demonstrated by the affected countries-India and Pakistan-is a pointer that even though differences may persist, the peace process is irreversible. This has been made possible by an understanding between the two sides not to use the incident to play a game of one-upmanship-a routine affair in Indo-Pak ties. On February 19, when Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was on the phone with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh, both agreed that it was not the time to take pot shots at each other, but to take care of the injured and the bereaved. The reactions from both sides were well-calibrated, even though Pakistani Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid said that passengers were locked from the outside, a statement that was vehemently denied by India. The peace process has clearly come a long way from the time when even a minor spark could start a big fire. The attack has opened a historic window of opportunity for both sides to jointly fight the scourge of terrorism. The first meeting of the joint counter-terror mechanism is scheduled to be held on March 6, and India has told Pakistan it will share the evidence it recovers. Pakistan, on its part, has been mature enough not to insist on a joint probe-which is not compatible with international law-as demanded by its lawmakers. It is prudent for the security agencies of both the countries to sit together to nail the perpetrators. As a first step, if the involvement of any Pakistan-based terror group is proved, Pakistan should initiate action and hand over the perpetrators to India. Many terrorists based in Pakistan are on Interpol's wanted list. The hand-over should not be too difficult for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, since these terrorists are not waging a jehad, but killing his own people. It may help him handle international pressure as well. The bombers of Samjhauta must be brought to justice. This should not be the end, but the beginning of a joint Indo-Pak war against terrorism. -By Saurabh Shukla | | The bungling continued even a day after the attack, at the Bhimsain Sachar hospital in Panipat, 10 km from the spot where police officials and hospital staff sifted through the belongings retrieved from the charred bodies in an attempt to identify them. Only three bodies could be identified by face. There was no passenger manifest from the Railways yet, and no phone numbers of next-of-kin who could be contacted. The only way for the police to identify the bodies placed in the makeshift morgue was to dial the numbers listed in the burnt and soggy phone diaries of the victims in the hope of getting through to a relative or a friend, or simply to allow the swelling mass of relatives to physically verify the identity of their near and dear ones. One of them was Mohammed Maqbool Qureishi, 58, who fought to hold back his tears after identifying the body of his 50-year-old wife Yasmeen. "She was going to see our three children, who have married and settled down in Rawalpindi. She seemed so happy when I had dropped her off at the Old Delhi station last night," says Qureishi, who runs a tyre repair shop in Srinagar. Was this horrific act a rerun of the Godhra incident? But why would Pakistan-sponsored terrorists attack a train carrying their own people? A statement by Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khusro Bakhtiar in the National Assembly the day after the attack said 49 of the 68 victims had been identified-27 were Hindus and 22 Muslims. Thirteen of the Muslims who died were Mohajirs-eight were from Karachi and five from Hyderabad, Sindh. Was the train attacked because it had Pakistani Hindus, returning home to Sindh after visiting their relatives in India? These are the questions that will point to the motives behind the attacks. Samjhauta Express never figured in the threat perception reports of the state or Central intelligence agencies possibly for the worst reason ever-it was never attacked in the past 31 years, not even at the height of Punjab terrorism. "We never thought it could be targeted by terror groups," admits Punjab Additional Director General of Police J.P. Birdi. The train was also on the wrong side of the socio-economic divide-it ferried lower middle-class Indians and Pakistanis who found the price of its tickets well within their means. The incident, which ostensibly demonstrated India's failure to protect Pakistani nationals on Indian soil, has given Pakistan a diplomatic stick to beat its opponents with. In sharp contrast, the Delhi-Lahore bus service, 'Sada-e-Sarhad', which carries passengers who are well off, enjoys far better security. It is accompanied by a pilot and an escort vehicle comprising a dozen-odd security personnel and is protected throughout by police forces from Delhi, Haryana and Punjab. Can this laxity be explained by the fact that the contraband-laden Samjhauta Express was a gravy train for the RPF and a host of agencies including the intelligence, customs, immigration and security staff at Attari? For the RPF personnel accompanying the train, frisking only means fleecing the passengers-many of them are agents of 'swari' operators, who have established a well-organised cross-border smuggling network. The security of the train begins and ends with the bolting of the compartment doors after it chugs out of Delhi on its overnight journey. The personnel only ensure that no one boards or disembarks the train during any unscheduled stop. Much of their nightly duty comprises nudging groggy passengers to probe the content of their mostly unwieldy luggage consisting of stuff like paan, fabric and even pressure cookers, which would fetch them a premium in the Lahore market. The excessive luggage carried by the passengers is the perfect ruse for cops to make a fast buck. No one even bothers to verify if passengers carry a genuinely-stamped visa. What, however, has been ringing alarm bells for intelligence agencies is the increasing use of the Samjhauta Express to smuggle narcotics and fake currency on its journey from Pakistan to India. That said, the security of the train was never an issue with intelligence and security agencies on both sides of the border. The bomb blasts have completely caught them off-guard. "It's the duty of the governments of Punjab and Haryana to protect the train," says Yadav, conveniently forgetting that the RPF had long taken over as the security agency solely responsible for guarding it. "We have nothing to do with guarding the Samjhauta Express," says G.S. Grewal, IG, General Railway Police, which protects only a few trains passing through Punjab. It is not just a question of protecting the 'Mohabbat ki gaadi' (train of love), but also that of setting right the other security lapses the terrorists have already spotted.
| | The Making of the Bomb | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | LETHAL MIXY: A suitcase with plastic bottles full of kerosene | | The locally assembled explosives suggest the involvement of many people The Samjhauta firebombers did not quite have the kind of new-generation explosives that were used in the thwarted London airline bombing plot last year. They used locally available materials to fashion crude but devastating Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). The three-stage IED consisted of a pipe bomb-an iron pipe packed with highly combustible potassium nitrate, sulphur and carbon and magnesium wires-connected to a detonator which was connected to a timer. It was packed into four suitcases, each stuffed with 14 sealed plastic bottles filled with kerosene and petrol. When the timer struck 12, it completed an electrical circuit activating the detonator, exploding the pipe bomb and blasting the inflammable liquid all through the compartment. The intent was to kill as many passengers as possible in the fire. At least two of the bombs failed to go off, reportedly because they were set at 12.00 p.m. and not at 12.00 a.m. The assembly of the firebombs locally-only the detonators were imported-indicates the involvement of at least a dozen people, from accomplices to the bombers themselves, whose number is suspected to be at least four.
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