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Amidst the gloom, heroic citizens rescue effort
Rescue workers survey the twisted remains of a train compartment in Mumbai. Photo: AP
Meena Menon
Mumbai: Faiyaz Gavte was crossing the foot over-bridge near Bandra suburban railway station to his home in Naupada on Tuesday evening when he chanced to look down at the tracks below. “I saw a train approach — it was a Borivli-bound train on the fast track and even as I looked, there was a tremendous explosion and black smoke came out,” says Faiyaz.
“The train was moving and people were falling out and it stopped a little after the bridge. The blast blew pieces of the train some 80 to 100 metres away and ripped apart the compartment. People hearing the noise, came streaming out of the houses on both sides of the track. I ran down the bridge to help the injured,” says the 30-year-old businessman who lives in Naupada, which is a housing colony parallel to the suburban railway tracks.
Along with Faiyaz, hundreds of young men from Naupada plunged into rescue operations, initially marked by the complete absence of the police or railway officials. Even stretchers were not available to take the injured or the dead. “We pulled out the padded seats in the first class compartment and used them to carry away people to the nearest platform,” says Akhtar Sonalkar.
All these young men belonging to a voluntary organisation called Al-Hind Ekta Society, rushed to rescue the numerous injured from the first class compartment. The police came much later and they were not willing to touch the bodies. “It was people like us who provided all the immediate rescue assistance,” said Sonalkar. People were in shock and could not hear. Many of the bodies were mutilated, some beyond recognition and there was so much panic, he adds. The injured and the dead were bundled in bed sheets and on makeshift stretchers. The railway station had only one or two stretchers.
“Many people lost their hands and fractured their shoulders — specially the ones who were strap hanging. Some were stuck inside the train and we had to pull them out and people were piled on each other,” adds Sonalkar. There was a lot of public anger and disbelief that the police did not act immediately. At least 50 injured and over 20 dead were taken to nearby Bhabha municipal and other hospitals. The society members collected all mobiles and wallets and gave these to the nearest police post so that they could be returned.
In nearby Garib Nagar, just a step outside Bandra station, when people heard the sound of an explosion, they thought it was a cylinder blast. But Salim Qureishi, a local Congress party worker said, “the ground shook and we saw black smoke. I rushed to the spot and had my video camera with me. I saw bodies were piled up on each other and many of the injured were in a critical condition. Some of the bodies were headless and some were in pieces.”
Salim’s footage has been aired on private TV channels and it clearly shows how the local people helped in the rescue and that they were the only ones present. “We took people in rickshaws to Bhabha hospital and it was our help that ensured that more people did not die,” he said. Aslam, a rickshaw driver said he was outside the station when he heard the blast and did not realise it was five minutes away. “We ferried people home till late at night,” he adds. Most residents were horrified at the turn of events and demanded that the culprits should be brought to book soon. “So many innocent lives were lost in the train,” said Salim.
The local anganwadi worker, Prema Yadav who was witness to the whole incident, said that it was a frightening sight to see so many dead bodies in a mangled condition. “If we did not help, they would have stayed on the tracks for a long time,” she pointed out.
Strange response
Residents who called the police to tell them about the blasts met with a strange response. The police simply said it was a rumour. Worse still when they did arrive on the scene, they prevented people from touching the bodies or rescuing the injured. On the other hand, most commuters in the train did not run away but stayed to help and bring down the injured and the dead.
Ironically, the settlements near Bandra station like Garib Nagar, Naupada and nearby Behrampada, are Muslim-dominated and are often targeted as hotspots of terror. In the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, they were also the targets of much police attention.Like Salim and the others, youngsters like Sanjay, a businessman and Vineet, a physical trainer, too did their bit on Tuesday evening. “The police were not ready to touch the bodies and we also helped to bring the dead and injured to Bhabha hospital,” said an angry Sanjay. Both rushed there as soon as they heard of the blasts on television. In fact late in the night, the Bhabha municipal general hospital was surrounded by people like Sanjay who had chipped in to help the victims.
In the rest of the city too as weary commuters made their way home, people came out to organise food and water and in some cases even transport was organised for those going long distances.
Akshay wrote:Where is the innate natural self defense mechanism in the human beings we call our citizens?
Train bombers 'funded by British businessmen'
From Daniel McGrory in Bombay
Indian officials claim that bogus charities are sending £8m to Kashmiri terror groups
SOME of the main fundraisers for the terror group suspected of masterminding the Bombay train bombings are operating from Britain, according to Indian intelligence officials.
The officials accuse Britain of failing to act against a number of wealthy businessmen, who they claim are using bogus charities to funnel up to £8 million a year to Kashmiri militants groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the synchronised bombings that killed 182 people.
Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, raised the terror link with Tony Blair at the G8 summit in St Petersburg yesterday, reminding him that India handed over a detailed dossier three years ago identifying 14 men living in Britain and was assured the suspects would be investigated.
“Since then nothing has been done, and the money still coming from Britain helps to pay for the terrorist camps where we believe the bombers were trained and this atrocity was planned,” a senior Indian security official said last night.
Gordon Brown pledged that the Treasury would use new laws to shut down terrorist fundraising and ordered that the bank accounts of 54 organisations be frozen, although records show that last year Whitehall only recovered £9,318.
“Britain talks about the need for all nations to get tough together, but more money comes from the UK to Kashmiri terror groups than any other country,” the official added.
One of those identified in the dossier is reported to be a Pakistan-born multimillionaire businessman who owns at least two luxury homes in London.
Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, said: “It is very sad the figure for the money still flowing to the likes of Lashkar has not been substantially reduced by now. It is difficult to track the money trail, but we should put more resources to doing so.”
The funding from overseas has helped terror groups to set up a string of new training camps in Bangladesh, close to the border with India.
Al-Qaeda-trained militants are reportedly running up to 13 camps, and MI6 and other Western intelligence agencies have been monitoring the traffic of young recruits to these centres including a number of volunteers based in Britain.
British security agencies had been warning that groups closely linked to al-Qaeda were planning to stage bomb attacks in India, using local sym- pathisers to carry out their operation.
Scores of Indian-based militants are alleged to have attended the al-Qaeda run camps near Bandarban and Chittagong. Security chiefs believe that the mastermind behind the bombing on seven commuter trains used one of these camps in Bangladesh to finalise plans for the attack.
Anti-terrorist officers involved in the hunt for the Bombay bombers travelled to the border town of Tripura yesterday to question 11 men from the port city who were said to have been caught trying to cross back into Bangladesh. The men are believed to be militant members of the outlawed (Student Islamic Movement of India), which police allege helped in the bomb plot.
Teams of armed officers continued with their mass round-ups yesterday, with further raids on a number of shanty towns around Bombay. So far they have detained more than 1,300 men, but the police face mounting public criticism at their failure to arrest anyone involved in the terror network that is believed to have been living in India’s financial capital for at least three months.
D. K. Shankaran, the chief secretary of Maharashtra state, of which Bombay is the capital, said last night: “We believe police will be able to zero in on the culprits within a week.”
As he left for St Petersburg Mr Singh, said: “We will impress upon the leaders gathered at the G8 summit that the international community must adopt an approach of zero tolerance toward terrorism anywhere.”
He also made a thinly veiled attack on Pakistan, which he has blamed for sheltering terrorists, adding: “The international community must isolate and condemn terrorists wherever they attack, whatever their cause and whichever country or group provides them sustenance and support.”
Talks planned for Thursday between the countries’ foreign ministers were postponed yesterday, with India’s Foreign Minister giving warning: “As a result of these terrorist attacks, it is becoming very difficult to take forward the peace process.”
Millions are expected to take part in a two-minute silence to be staged in Bombay tomorrow at the time of the first explosion. Bollywood stars who live in the city will join politicians, police and survivors of the attack in a public show of defiance against the terrorists.
Arch wrote:some info coming out after investigationTrain bombers 'funded by British businessmen'
From Daniel McGrory in Bombay...
Teams of armed officers continued with their mass round-ups yesterday, with further raids on a number of shanty towns around Bombay. So far they have detained more than 1,300 men, ...l
Bombay pauses to remember bombing victims
By RAJESH MAHAPATRA Associated Press Writer
© 2006 The Associated Press
BOMBAY, India — I
...
Also Tuesday, police said five men were arrested in northeastern India and they will be questioned to see if they are connected to the blasts.
The total number of deaths rose Tuesday from 182 after officials counted victims who died after being taken to hospitals in Thane, a town just outside Bombay, said B.M. Raut, a disaster management official in the state government of Maharashtra, where Bombay is the capital.
While police are still trying to determine who was behind the attack, an organization calling itself Lashkar-e-Qahhar said in an e-mail to a local TV station that 16 people took part in the bombings in Bombay, also known as Mumbai, and that one was killed.
But "all the remaining 15 ... are totally safe, and celebrating the success of this mission and also preparing for the next mission," said the e-mail, written in poorly punctuated and often ungrammatical English.
It advised Muslims not to go near main historical and government sites, or risk getting hurt.
In the e-mail, a copy of which was provided by Aaj Tak television, Lashkar said it would provide audio and video proof of its involvement.
Lashkar-e-Qahhar, or the Army of Terror, first took responsibility for the Bombay bombings in an e-mail Saturday to the station. Investigators say they are trying to verify the claim.
The group was unknown until it claimed responsibility for the March 7 bombings in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi that killed at least 20 people. Investigators believe it may be a front for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, an Islamic militant group based in Pakistan that has long fought Indian rule in Kashmir, a predominantly Muslim Himalayan region.
Kashmir is divided between nuclear-armed neighbors Pakistan and largely Hindu India, and lies at the heart of their rivalry. India accuses Muslim-majority Pakistan of materially aiding separatist rebel groups in the region, a charge Islamabad denies.
India's suspicions of a Pakistan link to the Bombay bombings have prompted New Delhi to slow a two-year peace process with its archrival.
"For the time being, the dialogue process has suffered," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters on the flight home from St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was an observer at the summit of the G-8 group of industrialized nations.
"I wouldn't say 'setback,'" he said, but later added, "It is inevitable in the backdrop of this ghastly tragedy that we reflect on our relations with Pakistan," Press Trust of India reported.
Investigators were also hunting for leads on the other side of India.
In the northeastern state of Assam, police arrested five men Tuesday who will be questioned about possible links to the Bombay attacks, an official said.
The men, all Muslims, were detained Monday in Gauhati, the state capital, and arrested Tuesday, said state police chief Deepak Dutt.
Dutt did not say if there was any evidence linking them to the bombings, but said they were found with more than $4,300 in cash, and one had visited a well-known Hindu shrine under a fictitious Hindu name.
Hundreds of people, many of them Muslims, have been rounded up in police sweeps in Bombay since the blasts and briefly held for questioning.
The CPI-M on Thursday said the Shiv Sena could not be dissociated from Mumbai blasts as it could have used the incident to iron out "factionalism" within its ranks, inviting a sharp reaction from the BJP.
"May be the Shiv Sena is divided. Who can say that it is not using the blasts to wriggle out of trouble?" West Bengal CPM Secretary Biman Bose told a convention against terrorism, organised by the All-India Milli Council, in Kolkata.
To reinforce his arguments that the Shiv Sena was facing internal problem, he said he saw cutouts in support of Raj and Uddhav Thackeray while travelling in Maharashtra.
"I am not in favour of dissociating the Shiv Sena from Mumbai blasts," Bose said.
Reacting to his remarks, West Bengal BJP General Secretary Rahul Sinha said, "We are not only surprised at the manner in which Bose has identified the culprits, we also call upon the Centre to make him the chief of intelligence."
He accused Bose of trying to outdo Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav in "appeasing Muslims".
"At a time when investigating agencies have gathered proof that Islamist organisations are trying to destabilise the country, whose support is Biman Bose looking for by accusing the BJP-Shiv Sena in connection with the Mumbai blasts," asked Sinha.
tfb wrote:And yes every angle should be probed,becuase we want to get to the bottom of the truth a nd the only ones beneftting from these actions is the Hindu funadamentalist groups like Shiv Sena etc.
kuch bhi lele.. wrote:ok forget about hindu and muslims behind the blasts.
lets talk only about indians.
is it right for any indians to give shelter and food to these criminals.
why sivsena,why not congress,communists etc,etc.
so let truth prevails.
and once it is proved lets not spare those anti nationals whoever they may be,they must be given to public for justice not to court of law.
jai hind.
tfb wrote:I mean the law should decide ho is guilty not oppurtunistic , vile and vitriol of the Hindu fundamentalist parties like Shiv Sena
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