“National Investigation Agency (NIA) teams from Delhi and Hyderabad had reached the accident spot to probe the matter. We are investigating the involvement of outside elements that may have been responsible for executing the derailment plan,” said an NIA spokesperson, at the agency’s headquarters in Mumbai.
While a possible terror link is being probed in the incident, police and NIA officials are not ruling out the involvement of Naxals either—especially since the Odisha-Andhra border is a Naxal stronghold.
Taking no chances, the ministry of home affairs has also handed over the Ghorasahan probe to the NIA. In October, last year, an improvised explosive device (IED) was found and diffused on the rail track in Ghorasahan in East Champaran district of Bihar .
Earlier this month, the Bihar Police arrested three youth with suspected Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) links. During the investigation, the youth claimed that they had been “paid Rs3 lakh” for planting the IED on the tracks. However, investigations revealed that one of them had travelled to Kanpur last year and orchestrated the derailment of the Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur in November, which killed nearly 150 people.
