Jamil Chughtai
On 18 February 2007 around midnight the Lahore-bound Samjhota Express came under terrorist attack just after it crossed Diwana near the Indian city of Panipat, located 80 km north of New Delhi. A series of bombs were set off in two carriages of the train filled with passengers and as a result, sixty-eight people were killed in the fire caused by explosions and dozens got badly injured. Most of the dead were Pakistani civilians coming back home after visiting their relatives in India. Investigators subsequently found evidence of suitcases with explosives and flammable material, including three un-detonated bombs. After the bombings, eight unaffected carriages were allowed to continue onwards to Lahore with passengers still under shock after having witnessed terrible scenes of the carnage unleashed by Hindu extremists on innocent passengers merely for being Pakistanis. As expected, till date no conclusive action what-so-ever has been taken against the proven perpetrators of the gory incident.
History of Indo-Pak relations is replete with instances where a number of initiatives aimed at promoting peace between the two rival neighbors have met a disappointing end at the hands of saboteurs present both within Indian deep-state and the Hindu extremist out-fit Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Samjhota Express was one such endeavor in the peace process that came with the launch of a twice-weekly train service to run between Delhi-Attari in India and Wagah-Lahore in Pakistan. Inaugurated in 1976, the Samjhota Express served as the only rail connection between the two countries until the launch of Thar Express later on. Given the nature of the trans-national service and the ongoing politico-religious tension in the region, the Samjhota Express was always heavily guarded as a high-risk target. As a result of so-called Indian Parliament terrorist attack on 13 December 2001, the train service was discontinued amid serious security concerns and it later resumed on 15 January 2004 under high security. However, the real stimulus for local saboteur came when the then Pakistani FM Khurshid Kasuri announced – just three days before the train attack – that he was going to Delhi on 21 February 2007 to meet Indian government officials to continue peace talks. Hence, there was extremely short time available to the RSS hooligans to plan and then execute some disruptive act cogent enough to stall this peace initiative on the part of Pakistan there and then. Naturally, the poor train was to become the easiest target on such a short notice.
Soon after the incident, both India and Pakistan condemned the attack, and officials on both sides speculated that the perpetrators intended to disrupt improving relations between the two nations. Official enquiries on the bombing incident though started by India forthwith but the investigations faced a number of breaks for no plausible reasons. So much so that till 2011 nobody could be charged for the crime during five years of investigations. During initial investigations, the bombing was allegedly linked to Abhinav Bharat, a Hindu fundamentalist group in India while other allegations also raised fingers on Lashkar-e-Taiba. Questions were also raised over a Pakistani national who was arrested after the bombings for not carrying valid papers and was suspected by the investigators. He was, however, released after 14 days through a court order following statements by concerned investigation officers that no proof had been found against him.
Out of hundreds of suspects, one Swami Aseemanand, a former RSS activist finally broke in and shocked everybody by confessing the commission of the heinous crime under the aegis of RSS. During investigations he confessed to have taken part in the train bombing with the help of bomb-expert team led by another RSS ring leader Sunil Joshi (later got killed in mysterious circumstances). He admitted that both of them planned and executed not only Samjhota Express bombings but also masterminded Ajmer Sharif Dargah blast (2007), Mecca Masjid blasts and Malegaon blasts (2006); each resulting in deaths of number of innocent Muslims. His confession, recorded in Hindi, has been reported in Tehelka news magazine issue dated 15 January 2011 titled “In the Words of a Zealot.’’ However, he later claimed that he had been pressurized by the investigating agencies to confess those blasts. In February 2014, Swami Aseemanand also gave interview to ‘The Caravan’, magazine in which he exposed that some of the worst terror attacks in India were sanctioned by the RSS, and its then General Secretary Mohan Bhagwat. Again Aseemanand came out with denial of having made such disclosures, whereupon the magazine released audio tapes of the interviews which included the Swami’s stunning allegations. Swami Assemanand has already been acquitted by the court on 8 March 2017 in Ajmer Sharif Dargah blast case. Despite all the testimonies and evidences, it may be safely presumed that Indian courts would miserably fail to prove anything against Swami Aseemanand, at least during the period RSS-BJP rules the country under PM Narendra Modi, who had himself spearheaded many such Muslim-killing operations as an active RSS karsevak (activists) in Gujarat.
In India of today, the Hindutva campaign is being enforced on war footings both by the state and its official subsidiary the RSS. The surge of both identity pursuits and Hindu fundamentalism provided a fertile ground for Modi-breed of RSS to create Hindutva fanatics with ideology of ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan’, besides pouncing at every possible opportunity to quench their chronic animosity against the Indian Muslims now and then. Throughout seven decades after partition, Hindu radicals remained bent upon doing some serious damage to their Muslim citizens, whether it was demolition of Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, riots in Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar, or Samjhota Express carnage, the terror was unleashed on Muslims unprovoked every time. During all such genocidal stints, Muslims were killed in hoards by the highly charged RSS mobs under fully ensured immunity, sponsorship and close-supervision of the state. Understandably, inquiries conducted to ascertain facts and fix responsibility for every such Muslim slaughter have been swept under the carpet in the best interest of the country.
Samjhota Express bombing was not the only gory incident in the history of shining India; numerous other episodes of Muslims killing were perpetrated by RSS-karsevaks in not-so-secret collusion with Indian state agencies. In fact, a well-planned genocide of Muslims is being executed in India since long. However, it need to be understood that the ongoing aggressive Hindutva campaign would not remain limited to the followers of Islamic faith only, it bears all the potential to spread against other minorities of India; including Christians, Sikhs and eventually the low-caste Dalits. Hindu fundamentalist want an India exclusively dwelled by high caste ‘Hindus’ only; and they are working on the very agenda impatiently.
