Chauhan’s NIA remand extended till March 2

A court on Friday remanded Samjhauta blast suspect Kamal Chauhan in National Investigation Agency (NIA) custody till March 2.

In its application to the additional district and sessions court in Panchkula seeking his remand for 15 days, the NIA submitted that disgruntled RSS worker Chauhan, who was arrested on February 12, had admitted to his role in the blasts.

On February 14, Chauhan told reporters that he had planted bombs on the Samjhauta Express. The February 2007 blasts close to Diwana railway station near Haryana’s Panipat town killed 68 people, most of them Pakistanis.

The NIA plea said that Chauhan had identified a few places in and around Delhi used for planting bombs, training and implementation of criminal conspiracy.

The investigating agency also told the court that at the fag end of his 10-day custody, which ended on Friday, he disclosed details of places in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan linked to the blasts conspiracy — so the extention of his remand was required for identification of those places.

“He (Chauhan) is disclosing before the NIA and we are getting that verified,” said special public prosecutor RK Handa. Before this, Chauhan’s lawyer Shailendar Babbar moved an application seeking bail and registration of a case against NIA officials for “falsely” implicating him in the case.

Babbar submitted that Chauhan remained in illegal custody of the NIA for about 71 hours before being produced in court, and had been subjected to torture and made to sign blank papers. Babbar sought that a board of doctors be constituted to evaluate the mental status of Chauhan, who was in “shock”.

Babbar also submitted in the court excerpts from narco-analysis of leaders of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) conducted by the CBI to press the defence claim that there was a SIMI link to the Samjhauta blasts.

The defence application will come up for hearing on February 27.