The Samjhota Express bombing issue has not died down. On February 8, 2007, two carriages of the twice weekly train service connecting New Delhi with Lahore were bombed near the Indian city of Panipat. Most of the 68 people killed were Pakistanis. While India squarely blamed Pakistan or Pakistan sponsored elements for the Samjhota Express and Mecca Masjid blasts, it was later found out that Hindu extremist Swami Aseemanand had confessed that leaders of different Hindu communal organizations — Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Abhinav Bharat, Jai Vande Matram and Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram — had planned, financed and supported these terrorist attacks, writes Abdul Zahoor Khan Marwat.
The tentacles of the Samjhota Express attack later spread to the Indian Army and Indian Military Intelligence. Of those nabbed was Colonel Purohit of Military Intelligence who admitted that Hindu terrorists were working to cause an armed conflict between Pakistan and India. Also, the Hindu terror groups were seeking to end India’s democracy and its secular status and wanted a conservative Hindu state in its place. The terrorists wanted to target the Indian Muslims besides other minorities, which are already sidelined.
An appalling development was that these groups had penetration in the Indian Army. According to Tehelka, there was covert support for Saffron terror groups among the uniformed personnel and the Indian Army seemed to rally behind them. Purohit even claimed that Gen J J Singh, who was the Indian Army chief till Sept. 2007, was with him. Even more damning was the revelation by Purohit that “one of our own captains had visited Israel for training and meeting and demanded four things from Israel, i.e. continuous and uninterrupted supply of arms and training, an office with a saffron flag in Tel Aviv, political asylum and support for our cause of a Hindu Nation in the UN. The Israelis gave a very positive response and promised arms and asylum.”
Also, there was some kind of support for these terrorists among Indian politicians, officials and policemen. However, Rahul Gandhi was one politician who admitted to the role of Hinduvta groups. WikiLeaks reported that Rahul Gandhi told the US ambassador, Timothy Roemer, the bigger threat lies in the growth of radicalized Hindu groups, which create religious conflicts, political tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community.
Also, a former Indian home minister P. Chidambaram had given a historic statement, telling the BBC that India could “no longer point to the cross-border modules as the source of terror”. He said that of the four terrorist strikes, Indian modules were responsible for carrying out at least two of them. He added that New Delhi needed “enormous” counter-terror mechanism, which was still not in place and they were working on it. The home minister warned against radicalization of the Indian youth.
Furthermore, the Indian media reported him as saying: “If more youth are radicalized, it will create more trouble for us. We have to wean them away. Then there is the concern how to communicate with the people of India. Policing is not easy in India. India is diverse, plural country. Policing India is a very complex task.”
The death cries of innocent Pakistanis travelling on the Samjhota Express and anguish of the affected families still reverberate, reminding us that India has failed to arrest the top plotters of the Samjhota bombing and take them to task. Instead most of them continue to roam free as there is little progress in the case.