Feb 18, 2022: The 2007 Samjhauta Express bombing was a terrorist attack that took place at midnight on 18 February 2007 on the Samjhauta Express, a bi-weekly train service connecting Delhi, India and Lahore, Pakistan.

The incident happened at a location immediately after the Diwana pass near the Indian city of Panipat, 80 km north of New Delhi, where bombs were placed in two bogies, both loaded with passengers. The ensuing fire killed at least 70 people and injured dozens more. Most of the 70 killed were Pakistani nationals. The victims included some Indian nationals and three railway policemen.

Investigators later found evidence of suitcases containing explosives and incendiary materials, including three IEDs. Inside one of the non-exploding suitcases, a digital timer enclosed in clear plastic was packed with a dozen plastic bottles containing fuel oil and chemicals. After the bombing, eight unaffected vehicles were allowed to travel to Lahore with the passengers.

In developments immediately after the attack, Muslims and specifically the Pakistani linked groups were blamed in all these incidents but later on, Hindutva extremist leaders themselves confessed their involvement in these acts of terror.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosions, the state blamed Muslim groups for the attack, but later the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) arrested an activist in New Delhi named Kamal Chauhan of the Hindu extremist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS).

According to reports, Chauhan was an explosives expert and had planted the bomb in the same train. Investigations later revealed that the Hindu activist, along with several others, was involved in the Ajmer Dargah blast, the Mecca Mosque in Hyderabad and Malegaon.

At the time of the investigation, Inspector General Hemant Karkare of Maharashtra Police was heading the anti terrorism squad at the time. He had identified the Hindutva organizations whom several political commentators had also called “Hindutva Terror” or the “Saffron Terror”.

Hemant Karkare was investigating the 2006 Malegaon blast, which included the names of several Hindu hardliners from the Sangh Parivar, the RSS, the BJP and the Jagran Manch. Mr Hemant Karkare was targeted and killed during the 2008 Mumbai operation. Intially, Mrs Karkare had earlier denied involvement of the Hindu terrorist organization Saffron in her husband’s death but it was widely believed that Mrs Karkare had received threats of retaliation from the RSS immediately after the Mumbai attacks.

Pakistan had urged India to share findings of the investigation which was conducted for Samjhauta train blasts after it was disclosed that Hindu extremist outfits were behind the terrorist activities in February 2007.

India has since adopted another propaganda tool against Pakistan, by repeatedly blaming the latter for the Mumbai 26/11 bombings.

As for the masterminds of the Samjhota Express bombings, Swami Aseemanand alias Naba Kumar Sarkar, the prime accused in the case, had been granted bail by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2015. Three others, Kamal Chauhan, Rajinder Chaudhary and Lokesh Sharma were in judicial custody in Central Jail Ambala. While Amit Chouhan (Ramesh Venkat Malhakar), Ramchandra Kalsangra and Sandeep Dange have been declared as proclaimed offenders in the case.

The investigation revealed that the accused persons met different persons across the country in order to conspire, plan and chalk out the strategies to execute bomb blasts at or near the Muslim places of worship, places inhabited by Muslims and the Samjhauta Express train.

They attended training at Bagli forest in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh in January 2006 during which the “timer bomb with high explosive” was prepared and demonstrated.

In the course of investigations, it was found that all the parts of that ‘incendiary device’ were purchased by people linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and its associate groups. The Samjhauta Express was chosen as the main target because of lax security protocols at the Delhi train station where passengers, mostly muslims boarded it.

The investigation by law enforcement agencies has been marred with key witnesses conveniently turning up dead, enforced disappearances, officers being transeferref or reassigned and pressure by extremist hindutva groups on prosecutors to go soft on the perpetrators. India refuses to depose witnesses from Pakistan, without whose testimony and evidence, the trial cannot be decided on its merits.

Meanwhile, a special court in 2019 acquitted Swami Aseemanand and three others in the Samjhauta train blast case, saying the National Investigative Agency failed miserably to establish their guilt. NIA special judge Jagdeep Singh also dismissed the plea of a Pakistani woman for examining eyewitnesses from her country, saying the plea was “devoid of merit.”

Aseemanand, had said in a taped interview in 2014 to Indian magazine The Caravan that some of the worst attacks in the country were sanctioned by the then-RSS top leadership.

The Samjhauta Express is part of a string of planned attacks from 2006 through 2007 where the targets were ostensibly Muslims and investigations by the National Investigation Agency pointed to the role of Hindu extremist groups. The wave of terror started in September 2006 when a string of explosions was set off at a Muslim cemetery in Malegaon, a town in Maharashtra state, killed at least 40 people.

Following this, in 2007, a blast in the 400-year-old Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad city killed six people and five more died when the police opened fire on people who launched a spontaneous agitation at the site. In a separate incident, at least two people were killed when a bomb went off at the Ajmer Dargah in the northern state of Rajasthan.

The NIA officer-in-charge of the Mecca Masjid case Pratibha Ambedkar was immediately removed and the judge who wrote the verdict was forced to resign.

The Indian state has traditionally blamed all attacks on Indian soil such as that on the parliament in 2001 on groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad but investigations have always proven the roots of intolerance and insurgency always trace back to extremist Hindu terror groups.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) initially blamed the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and also accused Pakistan for the Malegaon Maharashtra masjid bombing in 2006. It was revealed in 2013 that the Hindu extremist group Abhinav Bharat was behind it.

When inconsistencies in the investigation and forced confessions along with fabricated evidence were revealed, the Indian court had finally ordered on 25 April 2016 to release the nine Muslims who were previously arrested on fabricated charges.

The 2008 Ahmedabad bombings were also initially blamed on mujahideen and police arrested Mufti Abu Bashir but the investigation team could not find any evidence against Pakistan. Consequently it was revealed that these blasts were planned by Indian religious extremist having a background of Hindu-Muslim Communal violence.

India which is an expert at planning false flag operations such as the Pathankot air base attack, has consistently failed to prove any involvement by Pakistan in any of the attacks on its soil and just as all the ones before it and the ones following, the Samjhauta Express was a stage-managed drama to put Pakistan on the world map as the Epicenter of Terror in South Asia.

Time has proven that Indian secret agencies; particularly RAW arranged coordinated State sponsored terror attacks to defame Pakistan in the world and to fulfill a number of other sinister aims.

The Samjhauta Express is one in a long list of terror attacks planned by Indian security agencies to distort the image of Pakistan and its primary intelligence agency, ISI, linking it with the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

India has to date failed to produce any tangible evidence against Pakistan that would stand up in an unbiased court and as its internal tensions mount, the country itself is becoming increasingly volatile and unstable with Muslim minorities bearing the brunt of hate fueled RSS ideology.

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