Ahmedabad: Fourteen years after the attack on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra railway station in which 59 people died, a key accused in the case was arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Wednesday.
Imran Batuk, who is said to have played a key role in burning of the train on February 27, 2002, was arrested from Malegaon in Maharashtra. Batuk was into illegal sand mining in Malegaon.
Joint Commissioner of Police (DCB) J K Bhatt said that “Imran is a key accused who had been absconding since 2002. He is accused of setting the coach of the train on fire. His name figures in the second chargesheet as one of core accused.”
Gujarat ATS had arrested another key accused Farooq Mohammad Bhana on May 18. Bhana was a corporator in Godhra when the incident took place. To evade arrest, he then moved to Mumbai where he became a property broker.
As many as 59 people, mostly kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, had lost their lives when the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express was torched. The incident had triggered large scale riots in the state in which around 1,000 people were killed.
