In a major development, a special NIA Court on Tuesday awarded death sentence to seven of the eight accused in the Bhopal-Ujjain passenger train blast case. Earlier today, the court in Lucknow found all the eight accused guilty in the train blast case.
While seven-- Mohammad Faisal, Gaus Mohammad, Azhar, Atif Muzaffar, Danish, Mir Hussain and Asif Iqbal-- were given death sentences, Atif Iraqi was awarded life imprisonment.
Notably, on the ill-fated day of March 7, 2017, all the accused planted a bomb on the Bhopal-Ujjain Passenger train, resulting in the injury of eight people.
Accused wanted to bomb Pushpak Express, but failed
Nearly 20 days after the incident, the investigating agency arrested all the accused who revealed that their intended target was the Lucknow-Bhopal Pushpak Express. According to an earlier report of Indian Express, all the terrorists had travelled on the Bhopal-bound train on March 6-- the previous night of the incident.
Two of the arrested, Atif Muzaffar and Syed Mir Hussain, had told NIA that they had travelled in the Pusphak Express with an explosive-filled bag but were not able to plant it due to heavy crowd and ‘alert passengers’.
The report also stated that they got off at the Bhopal railway station on the morning of March 7, after failing to plant the bomb in the train. Atif and Mohammad Danish, the third arrested, had decided at the last moment to place the explosive on the passenger train that was waiting to leave for Ujjain.
“After their failure to plant the bomb on the Pushpak Express, they got desperate. They managed to get into the last coach of the Bhopal-Ujjain train that was about to leave the station, left the bag filled with explosives and got off”, the IE quoted its sources as saying. The explosion had injured 10 people.
