LUCKNOW: Former head of the Samjhauta train blast Special Investigation Team (SIT) from 2007 to 2010, Vikas Narain Rai on Tuesday said that during the initial year of investigation in the case, the then Union Congress government was desperate to unearth any Pakistani link which could not be proved. All that was found were Indori links even when there was no co-operation from the BJP-led state government and Indore police.

The former director-general of law and order with Haryana police also said that as per his observation, the blast that claimed lives of at least 68 people, mostly Pakistanis, was orchestrated by offshoots of Hindu radical organisations and while it might have not been their own conspiracy, the organisations had full knowledge and protected people like Sunil Joshi .

Rai was speaking on the ninth anniversary of the Batla house encounter, at a seminar 'Rising government attacks on democracy' held in memory of the recently-slain journalist and activist Gauri Lankesh, Rai. "There is a need for constitutional conditioning of police and for strengthening of democracy that in its weakness is helping the state, leading to incidents like Gauri Lankesh"s killing and frequent lynchings."

Commenting on the lack of speed in the Batla house case, Rai said, “There is no transparency in the case for which the government should have come out with a white paper and closure should have been reached. In its absence, democracy is suffering.”

Addressing the audience, Asad Hayat, an advocate and activist said, "It took us 18 months to get the court to register an FIR against Yogi Adityanath when he was the MP in Gorakhpur for his communal speeches in 2007 Gorakhpur riots. The file was stuck with the state government for beginning cases under two sections that require state intervention. Now after all these years, with the accused being the person in command of the files, first thing the chief minister did was to not allow the two cases against him to be begun in court. Is this not interference of state with democracy?"

