India says ‘too premature’ to share Samjhauta probe details
By IANSTuesday, January 11, 2011
NEW DELHI - India may not be giving the details of the Samjhauta train blast probe to Pakistan any time soon as the home ministry Tuesday told the external affairs ministry that it was “too premature” to share its findings into the terrorist act blamed on Hindu radicals.
The home ministry’s communiqu to the external affairs ministry came a day after Pakistan asked India to provide it with an update on the investigations into the 2007 bombing on the India-Pakistan peace train in Panipat that killed some 68 people, mostly Pakistanis returning home.
“At this stage we cannot share the probe details as it is too premature. The investigation is still on and is at a preliminary stage. We will take an appropriate decision when the investigations are concluded,” a home ministry official told IANS about the message to the external affairs ministry.
Islamabad insisted on sharing the probe details after arrested Swami Aseemanand’s reported confession about the role of Hindu supremacist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists in the blast in the Samjhauta Express.
On Monday, Pakistan’s foreign ministry summoned India’s acting Deputy High Commissioner G.V. Srinivas and asked New Delhi to provide information “at the earliest” on the progress of the train bombing investigation.
Aseemanand, whose real name is Jatin Chatterjee, 59, has been associated with the RSS-affiliated Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad in Gujarat. He has confessed in front of a magistrate that Hindutva activists were involved in the Samjhauta blast and the 2007 bombing at the Ajmer shrine in which three people died.
He also confessed that the 2008 Malegaon bombings that killed 37 people and the Hyderabad Mecca Masjid bombing in May 2007 were the handiwork of the Hindu extremists linked to the RSS.
Indian investigators had earlier blamed the terror acts on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami (HuJI) and many Indian Muslim youth were arrested in connection with the bombings.
