Cyber café owner quizzed over Jaipur blast email

GHAZIABAD: Based on the description given by a cyber cafe owner, the Ghaziabad police were on Thursday are making a sketch of three youths who allegedly sent emails on behalf of a little known terrorist group claiming responsibility for the Jaipur blasts.

The police said they interrogated the owner of Naveen Computers, the cyber cafe in Sahibabad, a satellite township of Delhi, from where the emails to media offices were sent. The emails contained video clips of the blasts in Jaipur.

The drawings were being made on the basis of the information the cyber cafe owner has given, the police added. The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Uttar Pradesh police detained cyber café owner Madhukar Mishra and his son Shyam from their Sahibabad home.

They also seized two computer hard disks from the café. The Intelligence Bureau and Delhi Police also joined the interrogation.

ATS sources said a man who identified himself as an Indian mujahiddeen emailed a text to television channel India News. To further his claim, he also attached a video clip showing a bicycle, frame number 129,489, with a blue bag containing a bomb on its carrier.

All seven bombs that went off in Jaipur Tuesday evening, killing at least 61 people, were planted on the bicycles.

The cyber café owner, according to the sources, told the police he was about to close the café around 8.30 p.m. Wednesday when three youths came and requested to him to keep it open for five minutes. The owner confessed he did not register their names and addresses or check their identity, as required under law, since they were in a hurry.

The three had brought a CD with them and sent the mail.

The email said: "We, Indian mujahiddins, would break the economic backbone of the country and ruin the social harmony. And this would continue till we achieve our goal."

Additional Director General of Uttar Pradesh Police Brij Lal told reporters in Lucknow that a sketch of the man who sent the e-mail was being drawn on the basis of the information the cyber café owner gave. He added that the sketch might be released anytime during the day.

The ID used for sending the e-mail about the blasts, "guru_al_hindi_jaipur@yahoo.co.uk", is similar to "guru_alhindi@yahoo.fr", from which some television channels received an email minutes before blasts rocked the holy city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh Nov 23, 2007. A total of five blasts in Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi had claimed 13 lives and left 80 wounded.

Meanwhile, the police were also studying the emailed footage showing a bicycle with a bomb on its carrier.

Brij Lal, who also heads the state Special Task Force (STF), said: "The bicycle used in the blast looks like a racing model with a straight handle, while the one visible on the email was an ordinary one."

"Furthermore, while reports from Jaipur suggest that the explosives used in the blast were tied to the handle of the bicycle, the email visuals show explosives planted on the bicycle carrier at the back."

While STF sleuths fanned out to track down the man who sent the email, Brij Lal did not rule out the possibility that the email was not from the real conspirators.

A team of the Uttar Pradesh ATS reached Jaipur on Thursday morning to evaluate whether there was a close similarity between the blasts over the past two years in different Uttar Pradesh towns and the one in the Rajasthan capital.