The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday filed the first chargesheet in cases of alleged conspiracy behind rail accidents before a Patna court. Nine people, including two Nepalese citizens, have been charged with conspiracy to blow up rail tracks and a train near Bihar’s Ghorasahan railway station in October 2016. The case has exposed the clear external linkages with conspirators based in Nepal, Pakistan and UAE.

The NIA has blamed ISI for roping in a Nepalese citizen to arrange for men to plant pressure cooker bombs on rail tracks to blow up passenger trains. The chargesheeted accused have been identified as Umashankar Patel, Gajendra Sharma, Rakesh Kumar Yadav, Ranjay Sah, Mukesh Yadav, Motilal Paswan and Arun Ram, Brij Kishore Giri and Samsul Hoda.

Hoda, who along with Giri is from Nepal, has been identified as the main accused. He is alleged to have organised men in Bihar with Giri’s help to execute the attacks instructed by ISI agent.

NIA sources said that Hoda was in the business of providing manpower and had earlier worked in Malaysia.

“The conspiracy hatched was to carry out IED explosions on railway tracks and bridges, to blow up passenger trains to cause loss to public life, disrupt essential lines of communication and to thereby cause threat to security and integrity of India.’’

The NIA said that six accused that are mentioned in chargesheet are in jail.

The NIA is also investigating railway accidents near Kanpur and Kuneru in Andhra Pradesh last year that killed over 180 people.

On November 20, 2016, the Indore-Patna Express 19321, derailed in Pukhriyan, near Kanpur claiming 150 lives. While the Kuneru train accident on January 21, 2017, the Hirakhand Express 18448, a scheduled passenger train from Jagdalpur to Bhubaneswar, derailed near the village of Kuneru killing 41 people and injuring 68 others.