There are three road routes from Shajapur in Madhya Pradesh to Uttar Pradesh’s capital, Lucknow – a distance of 796 kms. One takes over 13 hours to cover, the other 15 hours, and the third nearly 17 hours.
The “blast” linked to the gun battle in Lucknow is said to have occurred inside a general coach of the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train at Jabdi near Shajapur, injuring 10 people. It took no time for the UP police to claim the hand of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the low-intensity blast.
The blast occurred between 9:30 am and 10 am on 7 March. Later in the day, the UP police – acting on handy tip-offs from their counterparts in MP and Telangana – had all the information in their kitty and printed out on a press statement.
To make matters muddier, the railways authorities have expressed doubts about the blast, saying that a short circuit in the coach could have caused a muted explosion.
Travel Time
Three young men, identified as Mohammad Faisal Khan and Mohammad Imran from Kanpur, and Fakre Alam from Etawah, were arrested in Kanpur around 5 pm. Three others, identified as Danish, Mir Hussain and Atish Muzaffar, were picked up from Pipariya soon after the Thakurganj encounter began.
The UP police have been chary to mention which of the two groups that were arrested – Faisal Khan, Imran and Kafre Alam, or Danish Akhtar, Mir Hussain and Atish Muzaffar (alias Al Qasim) from Pipariya – were responsible for the blast.
If the first group set off the blast and then fled the scene of the crime, its members would have had to travel a minimum of 11-and-a-half hours to reach Kanpur, a distance of 708 kms. Which means they would have been arrested close to 10 pm on 7 March, although the UP police said they were arrested around 5 pm that evening.
Assuming that the second group triggered the blast, its members would have taken a minimum of seven hours to reach Pipariya – 365 kms east of the blast site. The latter group is said to have been nabbed on 7 March morning and their interrogation led to the arrest of the men in Kanpur.
Sudden Gush of Information
The alleged ISIS terrorists would have had to fly – or use a jet-pack – to reach either Kanpur or Pipariya before their arrest at these two places. It was after the arrest of the group in Pipariya that the MP police shared the information with their UP counterparts. The alleged ISIS terrorists supposedly spilled the beans on their associates in Lucknow’s Thakurganj in double-quick time, which is surprising by all accounts. There was a sudden gush of information.
Even as the encounter ended on Wednesday morning, questions have cropped up about the story surrounding the sequence of events that led the UP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) police to the target building in Thakurganj; about the role played by the MP, Kerala and Telangana police; and about a video clip that surfaced on Wednesday.
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Revealing Video
First, let’s examine the mobile camera clip that was shot at a location not known to us. Two people, carrying duffle bags, alight from the bus. As the duo move behind the bus to cross the road, a person comes between the camera and the two targets. This person is shown to suddenly slip behind a concrete pillar, as though on someone’s instruction, before the two individuals cross the road’s divider. An MP police constable with a .303 Enfield rifle keeps watch on the duo.
A closer examination of the blurred video shows that the bus has an MP registration number – MP 04 PA 2876. And the time recorded on the clip is 13:43 pm.
Now for the events leading to the shootout in Thakurganj. It could be that Mohammad Saifullah, alias Ali, who has been linked to the train blast, was holed up in the Thakurganj house along with another alleged terrorist, but may not have been in Jabdi. What evidence the police has to link Saifullah, the slain terrorist, with the alleged perpetrators of the blast is not clear.
Usual Recoveries
The UP ATS is said to have recovered a laptop from Kanpur, which allegedly contains ISIS-related literature and videos. As usual, some mobile phones too were seized from the suspects.
UP Director-General of Police Javeed Ahmed was quick to claim, as though the information was at his fingertips, that the arrested people are part of the “Kanpur-Lucknow ISIS Khorasan module”. The investigation into the background of the arrested people appears to have been conducted with lightning speed. How is it that the police so quickly dug up so much information so speedily after the train blast, but had no intelligence in respect of the ISIS module operating out of UP and MP?
From Two to One Terrorist
In a press briefing on 7 March, Ahmed had mentioned that the ATS, after digging holes in a wall of the room in which Saifullah was holed up, spotted two terrorists. But as events turned out on Wednesday, the body of only Saifullah was found.
It is being said that three state police forces – MP, Telangana and Kerala – shared information on the so-called ISIS module before the UP police was alerted about the alleged terrorists.
When asked whether Kerala police shared information on the ISIS module with either Telangana or MP or UP police, a top Kerala police source said, “There are certain things which cannot be shared.”
Hesitant to say whether Telangana police shared information with the UP ATS, Director-General of Police Anurag Sharma told The Quint over phone: “These are internal matters that I will not discuss.” Madhya Pradesh DGP Rishi Kumar Shukla could not be contacted as he was in the state assembly.
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