Looting, arson done efficiently

All the burnt compartments of Drutojan Express bear the testimony to Monday's violence. Six persons were killed after the train ploughed through a crowd that gathered on its track in Sirajganj. The train was brought at Parbatipur Railway Station in Dinajpur yesterday. Inset, interior of a burnt compartment. Photo: Kongkon Karmaker

The train in Sirajganj was extensively looted before it was torched, but how the entire train was burnt without combustibles remains a mystery, The Daily Star has learnt after talking with the investigators, railway officials and locals.
“They [the mob] first searched the compartments and looted luggage and other valuables of the passengers. We saw the fire when they were leaving the compartments,” a local told these correspondents yesterday.
All the 11 compartments of the Dhaka-bound intercity train were torched within 10-15 minutes after it killed six people when it ran over a crowd spilling from a BNP rally onto the railway track at Sayedabad in the district on Monday.
Dipak Ranjan Odhikary, chief of the enquiry team formed by the deputy commissioner to probe the incident, said it is impossible to torch the body of the train so quickly without using combustible components.
“Everything will be clear after the inquiry,” Dipak, also an additional district magistrate, told The Daily Star at his Sirajganj office yesterday.
According to M Obaidullah, acting DIG of Rajshahi divisional police, it is “simply unnatural” that the entire train was torched in a moment without anything highly inflammable used on it.
Many suspect that the entire violent act was preplanned, and petrol or any other inflammable material was collected beforehand.
“There was no petrol pump within 20 kilometres of the spot,” said Abdul Halim, station officer of Sirajganj fire station.
Accounts from local people supported his statement.
The BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia was taking rest at the Jamuna resort, some 10 km from the rally stage, when the incident took place.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh Railway's (BR) departmental investigation into the accident is also underway.
M Amzad Hossain, chief of the five-member BR probe team, said they recorded statements of a number of witnesses yesterday.
Some people saw the attackers use dry straws to torch the compartments while passengers' clothes and plastic covers, foams and coir of chairs in the compartments helped spread the fire, he said.
Asked, he said there is no possibility of an electric short circuit igniting the fire. Electric wires in a train usually carry no more than 24 volts, and it is not highly risky.
A number of witnesses and locals that The Daily Star has talked to, however, said they did not see any attacker use straws to set fire to the train. They saw the fire when two small processions were approaching the rally venue.
“The paint of the compartments, rubber, plastic and cloths can also spread the fire but only experts can say whether any fuel was used to ignite the blaze,” Sheikh M Mizanur Rahman, deputy director of Rajshahi divisional fire service and civil defence, said.