samjhauta terrorist attack

I was reading a experience written by a previous traveler in the same samjhauta express. He says about how the whole system works, here it goes….

“You just need a valid visa to get a ticket to Pakistan and most of the tickets are booked at the last minute of travel. The train starts at 9 in the evening and goes to attari, the last Indian check post before crossing the border. The passengers are guided through a metal frame for checking which is the only check done by the Indian police or army before boarding the train at the starting station.” The metal frames are now a day’s even used in entrance of malls to check the people, the trivia is the train travels to one our rival countries. I don’t have hatred against Pakistan but think about the problems we have with them, for more than 50 years we both are fighting for Kashmir, 3 wars for that, numerous incidents in which innocent people have been killed. So the train in reality goes to one of our rival countries and not a neighboring country.

I thought why only very few police personnel were allocated to such an important train?? The cause none else then our own politicians. The Delhi police unit has just around 60,000 personnel for catering to a city population in order of millions. In that too most of the police are for VIP’s and VVIP’S, u know what, only one tenth of the police are there for people ( statistics given by media). Can you imagine what meager a number is that for a capital of a country with world’s second largest population. The website of Delhi police quote’s “ with you -for you always” with whom you police are always??? VVVIP’S.

In terms of technology, we are no less than anyone else, around 18 cameras are installed in the railway station for safety purpose. But the lag is in logistics and scheduling of the trains, that particular track from which the train starts doesn’t have a single camera. I felt like LOL but couldn’t after losing 65 invaluable human life, let it be Indians or Pakistanis.

One of the RPF men quoted in a news article that the RPF cannot concentrate on any particular train like spending time for checking all the passengers as the number of personnel’s were way too less than that required to maintain the station.

The bombs used by the so called terrorists are not very complicated, they were simply IEDS it is called roadside bombs by the press. Roadside bombs and inflammable liquids like kerosene. I have read signs in train saying that you shouldn’t carry inflammable materials but never the police or any one for that cause checked in the railway station. It can at least be done randomly done for say 20 passengers in every train a s a first step.

The bombs used were very cheap, so the main cause of the accident is burning of the whole coach. This is not the first time that the whole coach is burning. I think nobody would ever forget the godhra incident. So I just searched whether there is anything called non flammable coaches. Not only there is non-flammable coaches but even India herself made a deal with France for non-flammable coaches in the year 2000. The deal ended after 5 years in 2005 without single coming to India ( I don’t know much details about this, just read it in some news article).

The villagers were the first to come to rescue of the passengers trapped in the burning coaches, people brought water in tractors and tried to extinguish the flame. The police and fire service came a hour later. One of the eye witness recounts the situation, he actually saved a woman but the woman was all along screaming about her children but the person couldn’t help her in bringing her children to safety. But afterwards in the hospital she recounted how her 5 children’s were happily playing the train even though it was late at night till that very moment.

Blame game has already started, everybody is pinpointing to some unknown terrorist, no towards unknown psychopaths, who else will like to burn people. Even if they are caught at last after years of court proceedings one of our own chief minister would plead for clemency for the accused like the parliament attack case or the some other leader would be too forgiving, that they would forgive the terrorists. This is democracy, we have to accept all this if more than 50% say so.

(I thank all those news reporters who helped me frame up this article with their articles.)