The New Nation - Internet Edition

bdnews24.com, Kolkata

Some crude bombs have been found on a rail track through which the Dhaka-Kolkata Maitree Express will start rolling on Monday, Indian officials said.

The bombs were found between Ranaghat and Gede railway stations, north of Kolkata, late on Sunday evening, the officials said.

Bangladesh rail officials were unaware of the "bomb discovery".

"The bombs are crude and are meant to scare, but we are taking no chances," said Dilip Mitra, inspector-general of Railways Safety in Kolkata.

Trains between India and Bangladesh are being resumed after 42 years, after they were stopped during the 1965 India-Pakistan war.

Indian Intelligence blamed the Nikhil Banga Nagarik Sangha (All Bengal Citizens Group), an organisation of Hindu refugees from East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, in planting the bombs.

The group has close links with the Hindu fundamentalist Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh or the RSS. The Sangha has opposed the "friendship express" and called upon their supporters to disrupt it.

"Why should democratic and secular India seek to develop such intimate links with Islamic Bangladesh…?" the Sangha's general secretary Subhas Chakrabarti said in a statement this week.

Intelligence officials say Chakrabarti's followers have mobilised a few hundred supporters between Ranaghat and Gede, which is the last station on the Indian side.

"They may try to block the trains, but we are prepared to foil their designs," said Dilip Mitra.

He said security has been tightened "as in airports".

"We have not received information about any recovery of crude bombs," ATKM Ismail, additional secretary of the communications ministry in Dhaka, told bdnews24.com Sunday.

Ismail was the chief negotiator for the launch of Maitree Express.

Qazi Asadullah, additional director general (operations) of Bangladesh Railway, said he was also unaware of the bomb discovery.

The two trains will leave Kolkata and Dhaka simultaneously on Monday morning amid much festivity.

There was much excitement on both sides of the border and hundreds of Bangalees are boarding them to visit their ancestral homelands.