India holds mass funeral for train blasts victims AFP
Saturday February 24, 2007
A mass Muslim funeral was to be held Saturday for the charred remains of two dozen people from the firebombing of a train headed to Pakistan as police hunted a railway worker for the attack.
Grave-diggers were busy at this northern village during the morning, preparing for simple Islamic burials.
Volunteers joined state employees at the graveyard, 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the Indian capital, close to where the "Friendship Express" was blown up at midnight Sunday killing 68 people.
The mass funeral was to be the last act of the tragedy, laying to rest the final 24 passengers who were so badly burnt they are no longer recognisable.
"They came on a holiday, for a wedding or just as tourists and the least we can do is to give them a decent burial," said Mohammad Shaheen, chief executive officer of the Wakf or Islamic trust that supervises Muslim graveyards.
"We are now almost certain that most of the bodies we have here are of Pakistani citizens although two corpses are so badly burned that not even their sex can be determined," deputy adminstrator Amit Agarwal, from the neighbouring town of Panipat, told AFP.
"Six bodies were buried here yesterday according to Islamic laws and today too we will accord all respect that is due to the dead," he said.
Relatives attended Friday's burials watching their loved ones, wrapped in a simple white shroud, being lain in the ground as Islamic scholars read prayers.
The families said they could not aford to repatriate the bodies.
The mass funerals were decided upon as the corpses were rapidly decomposing in a temporary mortuary without refrigeration, the authorities said.
Among Saturday's grave-diggers was a Hindu, Radhey Shyam, who said he was working out of compassion for the victims.
"They were the guests of our country and this is the least one must do," he said, supplying drinking water to the army of people cutting shallow graves.
Meanwhile, police were searching for a fugitive railway employee believed to be linked to the blasts.
Mobile phone records show that Taj Mohammad was in the Panipat area at the same time as the blasts happened, The Indian Express said.
Police also recovered 50 bottles of a kerosene mixture from his house in Bikaner district, Rajasthan state, the daily said.
Kerosene was used to create a huge firebomb aboard the train as it headed north to Lahore.
Police raided Taj's home Thursday and arrested his wife Saira as well as a man identified as Salman Ahmed from Mumbai, who strongly resembles a sketch of one of the two main suspects, the Express said.
Police believe Ahmed was on the train.
"They are all suspects now," Bikaner police inspector general Laxman Meena told the paper.
The Times of India reported that a recorded telephone call made shortly after the blasts pointed to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the main Islamic group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
But Lashkar, which India blamed for an attack on its parliament in December 2001 that almost pushed it to war with Pakistan, denied any role in the firebombing.
India has ruled out a joint probe with Pakistan.
However, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Wednesday: "Whatever information will be available ... will be shared" at the first meeting of a new India-Pakistan anti-terror panel starting March 6.
Mukherjee met his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Kasuri in New Delhi on Wednesday, keeping scheduled peace talks on track despite the blasts.
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