Police with sniffer dogs on Wednesday scoured the debris left from a series of deadly train blasts in the financial capital for clues about the identity of the bombers.
MUMBAI: Police suspect a new module of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant outfit set up in Mumbai recently may have been behind the blasts.
Mumbai Crime Branch sources told PTI that based on previous patterns of train explosions in Mumbai, it was likely that devices were loaded at Churchgate station and were fitted with commonly used mechanical timers set to explode at 6:15
pm.
"The perpetrators wanted to create an atmosphere of terror and knew that triggering simultaneous blasts in various parts of the city would serve the purpose," a senior crime
branch official said, adding that the suspects may have got down from the trains at stations immediately after Churchgate.
Mumbai crime branch officials who probed the LeT executed blasts in Mumbai in 2002 and 2003, told PTI that the entire module involved in those blasts had been exposed.
The two or three operatives from the module who are still absconding do not seem to be involved in Tuesday's blasts, they said.
Police also suspect that RDX may have been used in the seven serial blasts that ripped through suburban trains.
Police sources said the possibility is being explored in the backdrop of the Anti Terrorists Squad's (ATS) seizure of 43 kg of RDX from Aurangabad and other parts of Marathwada and north Maharashtra in the past few months.
"More RDX consignment could still be hidden in Mumbai or around and the same may have been used in Tuesday's blasts," a Mumbai police officer said.
The samples from the blast-hit trains have been sent for forensic examination and experts said it would take some more time to reach a definite conclusion. But the likelihood that compacted low-intensity explosive may have been used has not been eliminated completely.
While Police Commissioner A N Roy could not be contacted for a response, ATS chief K P Raghuvanshi told PTI that, "It was too premature to comment on the issue."
A senior Mumbai crime branch officer told PTI that there was a definite pattern in the blasts and the entire operation was executed with a great precision.
Preliminary investigations have revealed that the explosions were probably timed for 6:15 pm on Tuesday and that the devices might have been loaded at Churchgate station,
police sources said.
The seven blasts had occurred aboard suburban trains on the Western Railway line between 6 and 6:30 pm. They had all been on north-bound slow and fast trains that originated from Churchgate station.
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