The Nepal Police and Indian agencies on Tuesday arrested Shamshul Hoda, the alleged mastermind behind the derailment of the Patna-Indore Express in Kanpur in November, which left 145 dead. He was arrested at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu after being deported from Dubai, PTI reported.
Hoda, a Delhi-based Nepali citizen with alleged links to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, is also the prime accused in a twin murder case in Nepal’s Bara district. Three others – Brij Kishor Giri, Ashish Singh and Umesh Kumar Kurmi – were arrested from Nepal alongside him.
Deputy Inspector General of Police Pashupati Upadhyaya said all the accused were brought to Nepal from Dubai in coordination with Interpol. The Nepal Police and Indian officials will work together to investigate Hoda’s involvement in criminal activities, Upadhyay told PTI.
Meanwhile, the National Investigation Agency on Tuesday placed three others accused in the case – Umashankar Patel, Motilal Paswan and Mukesh Yadav – in police remand, ANI reported. They will be produced before the Special NIA court in Patna on February 14.
When the Bihar police arrested Patel, Paswan and Yadav, they had claimed they were working for the Pakistani intelligence agency to target the Indian railways. The three were arrested from Motihari at the Indo-Nepal border earlier this year. During an interrogation by the NIA on January 20, Paswan had confessed to filling a pressure cooker with explosives and planting it on the tracks.
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