ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: Pakistan has urged India to expeditiously bring the Samjhota Express bombing case to a logical conclusion and punish those found responsible for the tragedy.

The Foreign Office, which has been pressing India for four years to unravel the conspiracy, renewed on Saturday its demand for bringing the culprits to justice in the wake of a confession by Swami Aseemanand, a leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), that activists loyal to him had carried out the attack.

The issue was last raised by Pakistani officials in meetings with the Indian home and foreign ministers during their visit to Islamabad last year.

The Pakistani demand came as both sides announced that their foreign secretaries would meet on the sidelines of a Saarc standing committee meeting in Thimphu, Bhutan, on Feb 6-7.

“It took almost four years for the Samjhota Express investigation to come to this pass. We can only hope that no further time will be squandered in bringing the criminals to justice,” Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit told Dawn.

Sixty-eight people, 42 of them Pakistanis, were killed on Feb 18, 2007, when improvised explosive devices planted in two coaches of the Samjhota Express exploded. The train was returning to Lahore from Delhi.

Swami Aseemanand, who was arrested on Nov 19 last year for his alleged involvement in an explosion at a mosque in Hyderabad (India), confessed before a special CBI court in New Delhi last week that he and several RSS activists had a direct role in the planning, financing and execution of Malegaon, Samjhota Express, Ajmer and other blasts. The attack on the train came at a time when then foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri was to hold talks with his Indian counterpart on taking their bilateral peace process forward, resolving the Kashmir dispute and signing a nuclear risk reduction accord.

Soon after the incident Delhi had accused elements in Pakistan of masterminding the attack. Weeks later Indian officials at a first meeting of the joint terror mechanism handed over to the Pakistani side what they claimed was a picture of the alleged perpetrator of the attack.

Referring to India’s blame game on that occasion, the FO spokesman said: “The reported confession by Aseemanand underlines the need for avoiding unhelpful knee-jerk reactions as was done in India (at the time of the attack). The heirs of 42 Pakistani victims of the train blast are desperately awaiting their protracted trauma to come to an end,” he added.