NEW DELHI: A pall of gloom has not only descended on the family of Shahrukh Saifi, rather the whole locality in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh was in deep shock to find out that the prime accused in the Kerala train arson case is an “introvert” and “harmless” boy next door.
The neighbours always saw him with decent eyes, a young man who speaks less and greets them well while passing by but who would have known that one day, the country’s top agencies would be on their toes to find him for an “unspeakable” act of barbarism.
A neighbour of the accused Saifi who spoke to this newspaper on the condition of anonymity termed him as a man who was focused on his work. “Every day he used to leave home with his father to work as a carpenter. He had studied till 12th class. What just happened is as shocking for us as it is for his family,” the neighbour said.
While it has been widely reported that the accused Saifi was an introvert, this newspaper found out he was not afraid of cameras. “He ran a Youtube channel,” a neighbour said. This newspaper also found the Youtube channel with 488 subscribers where Saifi had uploaded six videos of his carpentry skills. However, it is pertinent to mention here that this newspaper could not independently check the veracity of the channel.
In his videos, Saifi showed different types of furniture he had made himself. One of the videos even garnered him more than 80,000 views. Meanwhile, the cops have also started digging into Saifi’s history and are determining his alleged network to find out the reasons why the 24-year-old man, who was focused more on his skills, took such a wrong turn in his life.
On April 2, Saifi allegedly set on fire a co-passenger onboard Alappuzha Kannur Main Executive Express train when it reached the Korapuzha railway bridge after crossing Kozhikode city in Kerala at around 9:45 pm. Three persons died — a man, a woman, and a two-and-a-half-year-old child — when they apparently jumped off the train on seeing the arson attack in the D1 coach of the train after it passed the Elathur station on Sunday night.
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The assailant entered the compartment with two bottles of petrol and splashed the contents on passengers before setting them on fire. He escaped from the spot soon after the attack. Eight persons, who sustained burn injuries, are undergoing treatment in various hospitals, One of them is still in critical condition. The dead were found on the tracks near the Elathur railway station in Kozhikode.
Soon after the deadliest crime hit headlines, a pan-India manhunt was launched to trace him and finally, Saifi was arrested by Maharashtra Police from Ratnagiri on Tuesday night while he was trying to escape after visiting a hospital.
