Samjhauta Express 'bomber' confesses before media

Samjhauta Express 'bomber' confesses before media
NDTV Correspondent,
Updated: February 14, 2012 18:36 IST

New Delhi: Two days after
he was arrested in connection with the 2007 Samjhauta Express blast that killed
68 people, Kamal Chouhan, today confessed in front of the media that he carried
out the blast. His family, however, has alleged that Chouhan confessed under
duress.

Chouhan was remanded to police custody till February 23 after he
was produced in court today.

He was arrested from Indore on Sunday by the
National Investigation Agency and then brought to Delhi. Chouhan, during his
interrogation, told the probe agency that he planted one of the bombs in the
train to Pakistan. His claims are being verified.

On February 18, 2007,
twin blasts ripped through two coaches of the Samjhauta Express near Panipat,
when the bi-weekly train was heading from Delhi to Lahore in Pakistan. Most of
the 68 people who died were Pakistanis.

The NIA has already chargesheeted
six people in connection with the case including right-wing extremists Swami
Aseemanand and Sadhvi Pragya Thakur. The four others have been charged for
assisting Aseemanand; two of them, however, are yet to be located.

The
NIA says that in its four years of inquiry, it has found that "the entire
conspiracy was hatched between 2005 and 2007 by the accused Swami Aseemanand,
Sunil Joshi (now dead) and his associates...at different places in
Gujarat, M.P.
and other places."

Aseemanand's confession that he was also involved in
the bomb blasts at Malegaon in Maharashtra in 2006 and 2008, both of which
targeted Muslims, linked him closely to Hindu terror group Abhinav Bharat which
counts Sadhvi Pragya as one of its founder members.

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