With the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Kerala Police unable to make a major headway in the Kerala train attack case, the Kochi unit of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has taken over the probe. The Home Ministry issued an order in this regard.
On April 2, 27-year-old Delhi resident Shahrukh Saifi set ablaze a few passengers by dousing them with petrol in the moving train from Kozhikode. He later travelled on the same train to Kannur and after a few hours boarded another train from there and got down at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.
In the incident, three passengers, who were witness to the incident, out of fear jumped out of the moving train, only to die, while nine others in the train suffered burn injuries.
Sources aid that the union government was not satisfied with the Kerala Police probe. It was only with the intervention of central agencies who alerted the ATS division of Maharashtra Police that Saifi was located at Ratnagiri and was arrested.
Saifi was handed over to the Kerala Police, and was soon taken to Kozhikode. His police custody ends on Tuesday and he will be shifted to Viyyur jail in Thrissur. The Railway Police have registered a case against Saifi and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) charges have also been invoked.
Even though Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan applauded the state police for their efforts, the union government was unhappy after Union Minister V Muraleedharan slammed the police for its inefficiency. Muraleedharan said the only thing that the Kerala Police did after the incident was to drive Saifi and that too without proper security from Ratnagiri in Maharashtra to Kozhikode.
On Monday, it became clear that the NIA will be taking over the case when the SIT head ADGP M R Ajithkumar told the media that Saifi was a highly radicalised person and the probe team has been able to find out all what he did right from the time he boarded the train till his arrest at Ratnagiri.
It became even more clear when state BJP president K Surendran slammed the Kerala government for its soft attitude towards terror-related events and the outcome of it was the train fire case.
"It's been more than two weeks after this incident occurred and no action has come against those who helped the accused after reaching Kerala. None appears to have any clue on who prepared his food as a tiffin box was found on the track near Elathur (the place where the fire took place). There are a lot of answers that have to come out. The Kerala government is more interested in vote bank politics and hence these things happen here," said Surendran.