Samjhauta probe: Two nabbed at Indore, taken to Panipat

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

''Bags shop owner Hujra Shah and Manager Puran Thakur will be subjected to sustained interrogation at Panipat,'' Deputy Superintendent (Crime Branch) Rajesh Vyas said here today.

The police earlier gave the accused's names as Hujaima and Poonam Singh Thakur.

''They 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 the transit remand. 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 over Indian territory.

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

UNI