Date:24/02/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/02/24/stories/2007022415560100.htm
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Police modify sketches of suspects in Samjhauta Express train blasts


  • Top brass of Haryana Police reviewed progress of investigation
  • Rana Shaukat Ali to return to Pakistan through Wagah border

    Chandigarh: The Haryana Police on Friday modified the sketches of the two suspects in the firebombing of the Samjhauta Express on Sunday. "Going by the accounts of some witnesses, we have brought some modifications in the existing sketches that were released in Panipat on February 20," the Superintendent of Police (Railways), Haryana, Bharti Arora told PTI over phone from Panipat.

    Ms. Arora, however, declined to give further details, saying it would hamper the investigations.

    The top brass of the Haryana Police had a closed-door meeting at Panipat to review the progress of the investigations. Rana Shaukat Ali from Pakistan on Friday identified at the Civil Hospital here the bodies of his five children who perished in the Sunday attack. "I came to India with six children. I am now going back with five children. I will now go back as soon as possible," he said.

    Mr. Ali came to the hospital without his wife Rukhsana. He left her at the police control room as he felt she would not be able to endure the agony. Mr. Ali arrived here on Thursday night with his wife and one-year-old daughter Aksa. He said they would return to Pakistan at the earliest through the Wagah border.

    Mr. Ali, who went through the trauma of uncertainty over his 15-year-old daughter Ayesha's survival, said: "The media should not have propagated the theory that she is alive. It is not right to give false hope to a person about such a thing." Ayesha was born 16 years after Ali and Rukhsana had got married.

    The other children of Ali who died in the blasts are Bilal (13), Meer Hamza (11), Abdul Rehman (6) and Aasma (4). His family was not too keen on the India visit as his children were to take the annual school exams due next month but went to Delhi to inquire about an ailing aunt.

    ``We crossed the border on January 23 and reached Delhi the next day.

    "We had planned for a ten-day trip, but kept delaying the departure for one reason or the another,'' said Ali, who was admitted to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital with 15 per cent burns. Rukhsana and Aksa had ten per cent burn injuries.

    ``It was as if death was waiting for us,'' said Ali, who runs a departmental store in Faislabad, Pakistan. Ali had decided to come here to identify the bodies of his five children. — PTI

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