Thiruvananthapuram, April 8 (IANS) Not much headway could be made in the Kerala train fire case by the Special Investigation Team of state Police which is questioning Shahrukh Saifi, the lone accused.
On April 2, Delhi resident Saifi had set his co-passengers ablaze in a moving Kannur-bound train.
The probe team is being led by ADGP-M.R.Ajithkumar, who is staying put in Kozhikode where the accused’s questioning is underway since Friday evening after getting his police custody for 11 days.
Even though Saifi has admitted to the crime, the motive behind his act is yet to be ascertained only then can police claim to have cracked the case.
Simultaneously, a Kerala Police team in Delhi is collecting information on him as his parents had registered a missing man case on March 31.
The SIT’s first agenda is to chart Saifi’s travel from Delhi to Kerala and according to sources in the know of things, he is understood to have landed at Shornur railway station on April 2.
On Friday, the probe team reached Shornur and took statements from a few petrol pumps in the locality and is understood to have found out that Saifi bought petrol in two cans and boarded the train bound for Kannur on Sunday night.
Saifi doused petrol on fellow passengers and set them afire while the train was moving from Kozhikode to Kannur.
Three people, including a two-year-old girl, died after they panicked and jumped out of the moving train. Nine others suffered burn injuries.
In the wee hours of Wednesday, acting on a tip-off from the Central agencies, the Anti Terror Squad of Maharashtra Police took Saifi into custody from Ratnagiri.
He was then handed over to the Kerala Police who brought him to Kozhikode the next morning and after a day at the Kozhikode Medical College hospital, on Friday he was first sent to judicial custody and then to police custody for 11 days.
–IANS
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