CHANDIGARH: Samjhauta Express blasts: Indian government neither issued death certificate nor has been able to search the accused. Sixty-eight persons, most of them Pakistanis, were killed in the twin bomb blasts in the cross-border Samjhauta Express, near Deewana railway station, on the night between Feb 18 and 19, 2007.
Bodies of 45 victims were identified and 23 bodies were given the mass burial. But 19 bodies are still unidentified and lying in the burial ground. Seven years on, 19 bodies of the victims of Samjhauta Express twin bomb blasts are lying buried unidentified at a burial ground in Panipat. At the same time, kin of victims are running from pillar to post to get death certificates. After a four-year-long probe, India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA), on June 20 last year, charged suspected right-wing extremist Swami Aseemanand and four others with triggering explosions in the Samjhauta Express. But due to non-release of DNA reports by Hyderabad’s central forensic laboratory, the kin of those believed to be dead are a harried lot these days. Momin Malik, a Panipat-based lawyer who had been pursuing the cases related to claims of kin of those dead, claimed that even after assurance by NIA officials couple of months ago, nothing has happened so far.
“Sometimes we feel ashamed due to the attitude of authorities in Hyderabad as well as Indian government. There are four such persons whose families have been wiped out in the incident. Just because of the delay in DNA reports neither those families have got the death certificates nor they have been given the claims,” Malik said. “There is a girl called Raheela, who lost her father Mohammad Vakil. The Indian government has neither issued his death certificate nor has it been able to search him. We ourselves have searched around 90 jails in India so far,” he added.
