Kerala train fire: NIA takes over probe, accused sent to judicial custody

Kochi, April 18 The Kochi unit of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday took over the probe into the April 2 Kerala train arson case.  

Soon after the Union Home Ministry issued a notification earlier in the day, the probe agency registered an FIR, here at the NIA court.

As this was on, the accused (27-year-old Delhi resident Shahrukh Saifi), whose police custody ended, was produced before a court at Kozhikode.

With the NIA taking over, the Kerala Police- Special Investigation Team did not seek an extended custody and hence Saifi was sent to judicial custody.

In the coming days, the Kochi unit will seek Saifi's custody to unravel the case and to learn his motive, something which the Kerala SIT failed to do, despite having him in custody for 11 days.

On April 2, Saifi set ablaze a few passengers by dousing them with petrol in the moving train from Kozhikode.

He later travelled on the same train to Kannur and after a few hours boarded another train and got down at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra.

In the incident, three passengers, who were witness to the incident, out of fear jumped out of the moving train, only to die, while nine others suffered burn injuries.

It was only with the intervention of central agencies who alerted the ATS division of Maharashtra Police that Saifi was located at Ratnagiri and arrested.

Saifi was handed over to the Kerala Police, and was soon taken to Kozhikode and until Tuesday he was under the custody of the Kerala SIT.

On Monday, it became clear that the NIA will be taking over the case when the SIT head ADGP M.R. Ajithkumar told the media that Saifi was a highly radicalised person and the probe team has been able to find out all what he did right from the time he boarded the train till his arrest at Ratnagiri.

It became even more clear when state BJP president K.Surendran slammed the Kerala government for its soft attitude towards terror related events and the outcome of it was the train fire case.