NEW DELHI, Feb 23: A police investigation into this week's explosions aboard the Delhi-Attari border train had acquired the characteristics of a non-stop farce on Friday as one news report spoke of suspects picked up on the basis of sketches of two men published countrywide and another said the hastily assembled identity kits were in fact now being modified.

The tragic death of 68 Indian and Pakistani passengers on Monday, however, found mention in the inaugural address by President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam to parliament's budget session on Friday. Elsewhere, going purely by media reports, there was more speculation than informed progress in the inquiry.

The Indian Express on Friday reported the arrest of several people, including an alleged brothel owner in Bikaner, in connection with the bombing. But the Press Trust of India said the two identikits were being modified on the basis of fresh inputs, which may well include briefs given by Pakistani passenger Shaukat Ali who lost five children but managed to escape the inferno with a baby daughter and wife.

Six persons, evidently Muslim, were arrested in Bikaner and a Pakistani national was taken into custody from Bulandshahr near Delhi.

"Among them were Saira Taj Mohammad and Salman Ahmed, who is said to resemble one of the suspects in the two sketches, put out by the Haryana police," The Express said.

Saira, the report said, had been running a brothel in Rampura Basti in the Nava Shehar area of Bikaner. "Her house was raided in August 2004 and four girls from Mumbai were found there." How this amazing detail was relevant to the case in hand was not explained in the story.

"Saira and Salman are not related, but neighbours said she used to tell them that Salman, who was a regular visitor to her house for six years, was from Ahmedabad and her 'moohbola bhai.' Her husband Taj Mohammad, a railway employee, has been missing for the last five days."

The report said a police team that raided the house has recovered bottles filled with diesel and a white fluid. "One thing can be said for sure is that many railway employees are involved in smuggling of diesel and Saira's husband Taj is one of the suspects," said Bikaner Dy SP Sharad Kaviraj. "However, it is too early to say if this is the same diesel and fluid used in the blasts. We are looking for Taj."

Meanwhile, the Haryana police did one better. On Friday, according to PTI, they modified the sketches of two suspects in connection with blasts in the train "after a key witness, Rana Shaukat Ali, denied the involvement of the person whose sketches were released by the police."

Mr Ali's decision not to travel by a special Pakistani plane on Thursday, if indeed it was an independent decision and not one prompted or coerced by Indian sleuths, had led to a brief diplomatic aloofness on the issue.

"Shaukat Ali, who lost five of his children in the blasts, said that the sketches of the person released by the Panipat police are not the one whom he had seen on the ill-fated train," PTI said.

"Going by the accounts of some witnesses, we have brought some modifications in the existing sketches which we had released in Panipat on February 20," the Superintendent of Police (Railways), Haryana, Bharti Arora told PTI.

Ms Arora said some witnesses in the case had given further details about the two suspects on the basis of which some modifications were brought about. Meanwhile, those arrested on the basis of the erroneous sketches were unlikely to find this vaudeville even slightly humorous.