A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team, probing last year's failed bid to blow up train tracks in Bihar, on Tuesday visited Ghorasahan in East Champaran district and searched an electronic goods shop which was apparently used by the subversives.
The shop owner, Ramprit Kumar, had allegedly supplied electric wires that were to be used for blowing up tracks at Ghorasahan, about 200km north of Patna, on October 1 last year.
Sources said that Ranjay Sah, who was arrested by the investigation agency in Patna on Sunday and produced in the special NIA court on Monday, identified Ramprit and pointed out the shop from where Moti Paswan and Umashankar Patel - the arrested East Champaran residents allegedly working at the behest of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - had procured electric goods for sabotage on railway tracks.
An official associated with the investigation said the NIA team accompanied by a magistrate searched Ramprit's shop - R.K. Electricals. Ramprit, however, denied providing wires to any ISI operative. The shop is hardly 200m from where a pressure cooker bomb was recovered last year.
Ranjay was then taken to his native village Athmuhana under the jurisdiction of Jharokhar police outpost in East Champaran. The NIA team also went to the "Dangal Music Studio" of Gajendra Sharma where the bomb was allegedly assembled. Sharma and his associates - Rakesh Yadav and Umashankar - are bing interrogated in the case.
The NIA team spent about two hours at Ghorasahan and also enquired about a mukhiya (panchayat head) of Ramgarhwa. An official said the mukhiya had been accused of providing shelter to Maoists who had links with a terror group operating East Champaran, close to the India-Nepal border.
Ranjay, said to be a close associate of Umashankar, has been taken on eight-day remand for interrogation. Sources said Ranjay was twice arrested earlier in two separate cases relating to theft and violation of the Arms Act. "Ranjay was present at the office of Dangal Music Studio and had assisted Umashankar when the bomb was prepared," an investigating officer said on Tuesday.
The officer claimed that Ranjay had also visited the spot when the bomb was planted to derail a passenger train.
The NIA is also probing the link of the Maoists with terror groups. Deepak Ram, who, along with his relative Arun Ram, was killed by ISI operatives in Nepal for failure to cause the Ghorasahan derailment, was suspected to be involved in a Maoist-related incident near Naubasta (Kanpur) in Uttar Pradesh in 2010.
Authoritative sources said Deepak Ram had then told UP police that he was a resident of Samastipur. He was released on bail.
The UP police were in the dark about his whereabouts. "Deepak was among the seven Maoists arrested in UP in 2010," an investigating officer said.
Seven other arrested Maoists were identified as Kripashankar, Vanshidhar, Chintak, Rajendra Das, Shivraj Singh, Navin alias Ashok and Bachcha Prasad.
