(Top) Bapi Mahato; the Jnaneswari Express after the sabotage

Kharagpur, June 24: Bapi Mahato, the prime accused in the Jnaneswari Express sabotage case, has confessed to his involvement in 12 murders apart from his role in the train tragedy, police claimed today.

Bapi, who was arrested on Sunday from a guesthouse in Jamshedpur, is being interrogated by the CBI at the railway-training centre in Kharagpur during the day time and by the cops at the Midnapore police lines at night. The CBI is grilling him in connection with the sabotage that he has confessed to have led, while the police are investigating the other charges.

“Bapi has confessed to us that he was present during the (12) murders and had led some of them,” a police officer interrogating Bapi said.

West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma said: “We already had information that Bapi was involved in a dozen murders.”

Bapi’s name first cropped up in the murders when the police were investigating the Jnaneswari sabotage. The police claimed that Bapi had confessed to have led a group that had killed CPM branch committee secretary Ajit Mahato and CPM gram panchayat member Khudiram Murmu in November. The murders had taken place in Lalgeria village, which is located within 6km of Rajabandh, where the train tragedy took place.

“The Maoists had picked up the two CPM activists from their homes and a kangaroo court was held in the village. The CPM duo were accused of being police informers and beaten up. Bapi has told us that after the two fell unconscious, they were taken to a jungle, shot dead and their bodies buried,” an interrogator said.

A police officer said Bapi had told them that he was present along with a group of Maoists during the murder of two Trinamul Congress workers — Kondakar Mahafuj Ali and Nirmal Nayek — in Muraboni village in January.

Interrogators said Bapi was also involved in the murders of Koushik Dutta and Paban Mahato, members of a self-help group entrusted with the job of reading electric meters in Lalgeria village, in April. “The two were shot dead because they were doing their job on a day the Maoists had called a bandh,”a police officer said.

The police claimed Bapi had named some of his associates who were involved in the Shilda massacre in which 24 Eastern Frontier Rifles jawans were killed by Maoists in February. Some of Bapi’s aides were also involved in the abduction of Atindranath Dutta, the officer-in-charge of Sankrail police station last year. “Bapi was himself not involved in these cases,” an officer said.

CBI officials said Bapi had named 30 villagers who had accompanied him during the Jnaneswari sabotage last month. “He also told us how the Pandrol clips were yanked off with hammers and pickaxes,” a police officer said.

The police yesterday arrested Amiya Mahato, a People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities activist, from a village near Rajabandh in connection with the Jnaneswari sabotage. The police have seized crowbars from Amiya who said he had collected the instruments on Bapi’s orders from nearby villages before the attack.