Railway passengers wait on the Banstala station platform on October 27, 2009. Indian troops secured a passenger train hours after hundreds of protesters in east India seized the high speed express and abducted its driver and his assistant, officials said. (AFP/Getty Images)
The Rajdhani Express, one of the country's most prestigious passenger trains, was stopped in West Bengal state. The attackers demanded the release of their leader, who had been arrested on charges of helping the country's growing Maoist rebellion.
"We have taken possession of the train," Dilip Mitra, a police officer, told Reuters in the state capital Kolkata.
Police earlier said the attackers were Maoists, who have stepped up violence across eastern and central India and against whom the Indian government has planned a large-scale offensive.
The Maoist rebellion began four decades ago championing the cause of poor peasants in the east, but has now spread to about 20 of India's 29 states, with the rebels targeting police and government property in hit-and-run attacks.
Police said the men who attacked the train wanted security forces to stop an anti-Maoist crackdown in the area around Lalgarh, a town at the centre of protests against an industrial expansion plan.
Two groups of security forces approached the train, and a police driver was injured by a bullet, Mitra said. The second group took over the train unopposed as the attackers fled.
A tribal body, known as the "Committee of the Common People", claimed responsibility for the train attack.
"We demand ... an immediate halt to the operation in Lalgarh by the police and central paramilitary forces," a spokesman for the group said.
Maoist rebels have in the past attacked goods trains and even hijacked a few passenger trains in remote districts before fleeing.
"The good news is, the train is safe, all passengers are safe," India's home minister P. Chidambaram told reporters.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has warned the rebels have managed to retain support among a cross-section of society and remain the the country's biggest internal security threat.
While the economic impact may be small compared with India's trillion dollar economy, the insurgency and the sense that it is worsening signals that India does not fully control its own territory and adds to risks for companies mulling investments.
