Kanpur train accident was conspiracy from across the border: PM Modi Says Gonda needs to elect only those who are full of patriotism, only then we can do anything good
At a public rally in Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district, near the Indo-Nepal border, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that the train accident in Kanpur on November 20, 2016, was a terror attack. He said hundreds were killed in the accident and the "conspiracy" was hatched from across the border. The PM appealed that people shouldn't cast their vote for those who were likely to help terrorists from across the border and make Gonda, and India, unsafe.
On November 20, several coaches of the Patna bound Indore-Rajendranagar Express had derailed in Pukhrayan, near Kanpur Dehat. With 148 people killed, it was the deadliest train accident in India since 1999. Initially, the cause of these accidents was attributed to track fractures and wagon defects.
In its preliminary report, the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) found no evidence of sabotage in the November 20 accident. The report identified overaged coaches, carriage and wagon defects, and wheel alignment issues, as the primary reasons behind the derailment.
But there was a twist to the tale when in January Bihar police arrested Moti Paswan, Uma Shankar and Mukesh Yadav for allegedly planting an IED, or Improved Explosive Device, on a track in Ghorasahan, East Champaran district of Bihar on October 1. The police claimed that Paswan confessed to the role of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, in several recent train accidents. These included the Ajmer-Sealdah Express, which derailed near Kanpur on December 28. Nobody was killed in that accident, and also the Jagdalpur-Bhubaneshwar Hirakhand Express derailment in Andhra Pradesh's Vizianagaram district on January 22, in which 40 people were killed. Read more