Where peace stumbles on pebble, a vitally important round of talks between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan, scheduled for Wednesday, has survived yet another horrific incident of terrorism. Even a year ago its debris woould have become a road block. The spontaneous reaction to the terrorist attack that killed at least 67 passengers on the Indo-Pak Samjhauta Express (Amity Express) at Panipat, a town famous for historic battles that changed the destiny of Delhi, has been an unusual, common anger against criminals who kill innocents to achieve their diabolical purposes. The victims were mainly Pakistanis returning home after visits to relatives separated in the Partition of 1947. As one middle-aged Pakistani woman put it, "Allah ke nahin, shaitan ke bande ain (The killers are not men of Allah, they are the people of Satan)." Islamabad and New Delhi underscored their common conviction that any resurgence of anger would mean a victory to the terrorists. Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President General Pervez Musharraf refused the traditional option of a knee-jerk blame game and indicated, in different ways, that barbaric terrorism would not be allowed to sabotage this dialogue. Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav admitted that there had been a security lapse at Old Delhi railway station, and then offered a substantial amount of blood money: Rs 10 lakhs per death, plus a railway job to the family of any Indian who had died. The dead do not return at the sight of a cheque in India or Pakistan, but it does help since life goes on. But more than one anxious relative refused to be assuaged by the thought of riches, and the anger at the awful security mismanagement was compounded by the pathetic inability to provide information. India's meteoric ascent has a lot of dust in the tail.
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Panipat
19 February 2007
By RAMESH RAMACHANDRAN and AMITABH SHANKAR
Two blasts occurred on the 4001 Delhi-Attari train within 72 minutes of
the train leaving the Old Delhi Railway Station at 10.40 pm on Sunday night. At least 67
passengers on board two coaches perished in the ensuing fire when the train was
approaching the Diwana railway station near Panipat. At least 12 passengers are
recovering from burns at the Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi. Four fire tenders from the
nearby National Fertilisers Limited took nearly an hour to put out the fire.
Iftikar Ahmed's brother Zakir called him before he (Zakir) and their parents boarded the
4001 Delhi-Attari train at 10.40 pm from the Old Delhi Railway Station on Sunday. The
family from Village Nazibabad in Bijnore, Uttar Pradesh, was travelling to Pakistan to
meet their distant relatives. At 1.40 am, an unidentified caller rang up Iftikar to tell him
that his parents had died in a blast on the train and that his brother was being rushed to
the Safdarjung Hospital in New Delhi.
"I have still not been able to identify my parents's bodies," Iftikar sobbed inconsolably.
He reached Panipat at 10 in the morning and immediately rushed to the Bhim Sen
Sachar Hospital where he was told the bodies were being brought. He has been waiting
ever since, to retrieve the mortal remains of his parents, only to be told that he may
have to wait longer as many of the bodies were charred beyond recognition. "What will I
tell my family back home? My sister is here with me, what do I tell her?" he cried.
The officials at Bhim Sen Sachar Hospital told this newspaper that at least five of the 67
people killed have since been identified by 6 pm. Among the dead who have been
identified are one Pakistani and four Indians. The Indian victims are: Sakeena Begum,
wife of Mohd Yusuf, resident of 338 Gali No 43, Zafrabad, Seelampur, Delhi; Yasmin
Akhtar, wife of Mohd Maqbool, resident of Srinagar; Kashmir Singh, Railway Protection
Force at Attari, resident of Amritsar; and an RPF constable Rajinder Pal, also from
Amritsar. The Pakistani was identified as Sapik Ahmed, son of Maqbool Khan, resident of
Karachi.
The officials at Bhim Sen Sachar Hospital said that 527 passengers who survived the
blasts crossed over to Pakistan safely later in the evening. All the 527 passengers were
bundled into 11 coaches of the Delhi-Attari train after five coaches including the two that
bore the brunt of the explosions were detached and stationed near the Diwana railway
station. "The remaining passengers left at 2.50 am and reached Panipat at 3.05 am for
their onward journey," an Assistant Station Master V Gupta told this correspondent.
"I ended my shift at 8 pm and handed over the charge to assistant station master Vinod
Kumar Gupta. A gateman alerted him and Gupta then relayed the information to the next
gate, afew metres ahead of the station. The driver applied emergency brakes and
brought the train to a halt quickly and that helped to stop the spread of fire. If the train
had continued its run to the Panipat railway station that was only five minutes away,
even the last three coaches of the train could have gutted," said Mr Verma, who spent
the night helping his colleagues in the rescue and relief efforts.
Preliminary investigation into the nature of explosives used to trigger the blasts have
revealed a crude mixture of sulphur and potassium nitrate and kerosene-filled glass
bottles. Officials said a low grade mixture of potassium nitrate with sulphur had been
packed in a suitcase along with several bottles filled with kerosene. The combination of
sulphur and potassium nitrate, highly combustible in nature, is generally used for
manufacturing gun powder. Immediately on detonation, kerosene spilt all over in one
compartment causing massive fire that spread quickly engulfing another general
compartment.
The morning after the terrorist attack, bodies charred beyond recognition, mangled metal
of the two coaches, burnt bangles, footwear and other belongings of the passengers
were to be seen at the site. Police and hospital authorities said they were facing great
difficulty in identifying the dead as very few of the relatives could reach the civil hospital
here today. "We are looking for the travel documents to establish their identities," a
police official said. Police have set up a camp site at the Bhimsen Sachar Civil Hospital,
where the charred remains lay in the mortuary -- their only identification is the number
tag attached to the bag carrying the body. "We are trying to identify the dead using the
passports that had been found," he said. "We have found some telephone diaries,
Pakistani currency and a few passports from among the belongings of the dead," a
police official said, expressing hope that these would help in establishing the identity of
the dead.
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