Samjhauta probe: Two nabbed at Indore

Indore, Mar 14 (UNI) Two persons have been arrested here by a Haryana Police team in connection with the February 18 terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express near Panipat even as the blasts' links were being searched for in Madhya Pradesh's commercial capital, the police said.

The accused were taken away for interrogation by the team.

''Bags shop owner Hujaima and Manager Poonam Singh Thakur were apprehended yesterday for not cooperating with the investigation,'' Inspector-General (Indore Range) Rajendra Kumar told UNI.

Haryana Police claimed that the covers of three unexploded suitcase-bombs found at the blasts site were purchased from the shop where similar cloth was seized and sent for laboratory analysis.

A local court issued a transit remand for the accused. The Haryana Police team is conducting an investigation here for several days. More than a dozen counterparts have fanned out across India.

About 70 people were killed and 50 injured when two firebombs went off on the New Delhi-Wagah Samjhauta Express. Most of the dead, including three children, were Pakistani citizens, the first civilians of that country to have died in a terrorist strike in Indian territory.

The attack came a day ahead of Pakistan Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri's three-day official visit to New Delhi.

UNI