NEW DELHI: Had it not been for the blind courage — or foolhardiness — of an inebriated passenger, the police might never have found the forensic evidence at the centre of the fast-unfolding investigation into the bombing of the Samjhauta Express.

At midnight on Sunday night, Karachi resident Osman Mohammed awoke to find his compartment shrouded in smoke. Befuddled, he at first refused fellow passengers' entreaties to exit the compartment. A few minutes later, though, he tried to find his way out, and noticed a small light flashing inside a cheap, plastic-lined suitcase — now known to be one of the several firebombs planted on the train.

In an act of staggering courage, Mr. Mohammed threw one suitcase out of the compartment and dragged a second up to the door as rescuers entered. Both suitcases — a third thought to contain a bomb has now been confirmed to be harmless — were packed with kerosene-filled bottles, stuffed with cotton wool. An electronic circuit linked the detonator to the battery and digital timer.

Terror patterns

The police on Tuesday released sketches of two suspects, based on the testimony by an injured eyewitness Rana Shaukat Ali, who lost his five children in the fire. Officials, however, warned that eyewitness accounts of high-stress events such as bombings were rarely credible.

"After the Mumbai serial bombings, many people claimed to have seen suspicious individuals and incidents. Without exception, their testimony turned out to be misleading," notes a Delhi police officer.

Instead, experts are looking hard at bomb intelligence and data. Khalistan terrorist groups, for example, have repeatedly used incendiary devices over the last two years. Firebombs went off on buses in Jalandhar in April and May 2006. A third bus was bombed in Chandigarh in 2005. Several people were injured in these low-intensity bombings, which were at first mistaken for accidents, but there were no fatalities.

Punjab police investigators recently charged two alleged members of the proscribed Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), Lasuri resident Satnam Singh and Phagwara-based Charanjeet Singh, with executing this series of bombings. The investigators believe that the men used incendiary devices, instead of traditional bombs, in the hope that police would find it impossible to trace the origin of the petrol used in their manufacture.

KZF-Hizb links

Interestingly, the KZF has well-documented links with the Hizb ul-Mujahideen and other Jammu and Kashmir-based terrorist groups. Its Pakistan-based chief, Ranjit Singh Neeta, was originally a trans-border trafficker, operating out of Jammu. One of the 20 terrorists India wants Pakistan to deport, Neeta is alleged to be responsible for the bombing of six trains and buses, running between Jammu and Pathankot, between 1988 and 1999.

However, the detonators used in the 2005-2006 KZF attacks were crude compared to the complex, timer-controlled devices used to firebomb the Samjhauta Express. "What the Samjhauta Express bomb-maker did was the equivalent of rigging a beat-up old Ambassador car with a brand new Mercedes engine. It makes no sense — unless the intention is deception," says an intelligence official.

What might have been the purpose of deception is starting to become clear. Jihadi organisations in Pakistan have already begun blaming the Indian security establishment and Hindu fundamentalist groups for the attacks. A United Jihad Council release said the "act can only be the handiwork of Indian agencies or the Hindu fundamentalists to sabotage the ongoing Indo-Pak peace process."

Islamist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who is backed by both the Hizb and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, said no "sane person could carry out such act." However, "in India, there is no dearth of such people, who for fulfilling their nefarious designs, can stoop to any extent."

In a press statement released late on Monday, he demanded that an international commission be set up to probe the incident.

Allegations of this kind, experts said, would have appeared plausible had the two suitcase bombs found on the Samjhauta Express not been removed by Mr. Mohammed, who is being questioned by investigators. "We would have had no hard evidence that the train had been bombed by terrorists," the intelligence official said, "and the fire would have been put down to arson. No one would have believed the truth."

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