Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence appears to have altered its modus operandi to carry out subversive activities in India after the arrest of Yasin Bhatkal, co-founder of the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen (IM), from Raxaul on the India-Nepal border in East Champaran district in 2013.

This perception of security agencies came to the fore during interrogation of Moti Paswan, a suspected Maoist-cum-IM operative arrested in East Champaran on Monday.

Moti and his two associates - Mukesh Yadav and Umashankar Patel - were taken on six-day police remand for further quizzing on Wednesday.

A senior official of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said that the ISI, instead of its dedicated sleeper cells, has opted to hire local criminals and self-proclaimed Maoists to carry out terror activities in India. Hence the task to target a passenger train near Ghorasahan in East Champaran was assigned to a gangster from Nepal, Brajesh Giri alias Giri Baba.

The officer said that IM operative Giri, a resident of Birganj in Nepal, was tasked to plant explosives to blow up the Indore-Rajendranagar Express near Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh in November last year. Another train was also on the target of the group headed by Giri, a senior police official quoted Moti as saying.

The police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: "This is for the first time that the ISI has used criminals and Maoists, instead of dedicated sleeper cells, to carry out its operation in Bihar (read Indian territory)."

Earlier, the ISI used to operate in India through IM operatives who were assigned to create dedicated sleeper cells by recruiting jobless youths from different parts of Bihar. Bhatkal had been credited with setting up the Darbhanga module of IM with the help of Tahseen alias Monu, a native of Samastipur district, whose name figured in the serial bomb explosions in Patna's Gandhi Maidan and the Mahabodhi Mahavihara in Bodhgaya.

The investigating agencies also laid their hands on a video that recorded the conservation between Giri and Moti after the latter's failure to cause derailment of the train shuttling between Raxaul and Sitamarhi near Ghorasahan on October 1 last year. Moti, according to the police, revealed to the interrogators that the ISI had planned to carry out serial blasts in Indore (Madhya Pradesh) and Delhi after its unsuccessful attempt to blow up the train at Ghorasahan. He, however, failed to explain the reason for delay in the plan.

Moti denied having met Giri, who, the police say, was working for the ISI at the behest of Samshul Hoda, a Dubai-based businessman. "I never met Hoda or talked to him over phone. But I met his brother, who lives at Birganj in Nepal," police sources quoted Moti as telling his interrogators.

The NIA has meanwhile requested the Union home ministry to hand over the probe into the alleged role of the ISI in the Indore-Rajendranagar Express derailment near Kanpur last year. At least 150 people died and over 200 were injured in the derailment.

"We have sent a letter to the ministry seeking transfer of the case to the agency from Bihar police," said a senior NIA official.