ISLAMABAD, July 5: India on Thursday paid Rs45.8 million in compensation to heirs of the 29 Pakistani victims of the Feb 18 Samjhota Express bombing. Compensation cheques were handed over to relatives of train tragedy victims by Satya Brata Pal, the Indian High Commissioner, at a ceremony held at the Indian High Commission.

Rana Shaukat, who lost five children in the tragedy, received Rs4.5 million at the ceremony.

Speaking on the occasion, the Indian High Commissioner said words could not describe what had happened five months ago. “It has taken away from you those who were the closest to you. It has left many with serious injuries, and survivors will carry the memory and scars of this tragedy with them throughout their lives.”

He said that Pakistani passengers of the Samjhota Express were welcome guests in India. He expressed his desire to see many more Pakistanis visiting India and many more Indians making journey to Pakistan.

“That is the way to build Samjhota,” he remarked.

Mr Pal, however, observed that there were some elements who did not want these people-to-people contacts to flourish, adding that they wanted enmity to fester and used various means to slow down or block the peace process.

“The most vile are terrorists, who kill and maim innocent people to try to frighten others, and divide the people of Pakistan and India. We must not let these evil people win.”

About efforts being made to bring to book those who had carried out the terrorist attack, he said that investigation agencies in India were doing everything possible to track them down.

“We also have an Anti-Terror Mechanism with the government of Pakistan, if our investigations throw up leads that need to be followed here, we will approach our counterparts through the mechanism, and will hope for their unstinted support,” he said, clearly indicating that India was still clueless about perpetrators of the Panipat attack.

He said that once investigations were complete, they would be made public with the launching of legal proceedings.

Sixty-eight people were killed and dozens injured when bombs exploded in different bogies of the Samjhota Express, a twice-weekly train service between New Delhi and Lahore.

S. K. Reddy, a senior official of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, told newsmen that 41 of the deceased had so far been identified as Pakistanis. He said there were a total of 19 people among the dead who could not be identified, but subsequent DNA testing helped establish that two of them were Pakistanis.