From the Bangladesh border to southern India, investigators are fanning out across India as they try to unravel the plot behind the Jaipur serial blasts
NEW DELHI: From the Bangladesh border to southern India, investigators are fanning out across India as they try to unravel the plot behind the Jaipur serial blasts — and, more important, prevent the next big one. This is increasingly becoming their main concern as intelligence agencies struggle to penetrate an intricate network of the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami (HuJI) and a faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which they are convinced is behind the Jaipur blasts and those earlier in Hyderabad, Malegaon, and three cities in Uttar Pradesh.
Investigators see the email, in the name of “Indian Mujahideen”, sent to TV channels with a clip of what was claimed to be one of the cycle bombs that wrecked Jaipur as a red herring. And Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje cast doubts on the authenticity of the video clips. “Some of the footage may have been meant to mislead,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Rajasthan police released three more sketches of suspects in Tuesday’s blasts. They had released one sketch of the prime suspect on Wednesday.
Some reports spoke of police questioning a Mumbai-based woman who reportedly accompanied the prime suspect to purchase bicycles from a shop in Jaipur.
Hundreds of police and intelligence officers have fanned out across the country to find the footsoldiers behind the Jaipur blasts.
Around 20 people may have been involved in preparing and planting the bombs, investigators believe.
To get clue to these 20 men, investigators are going through the detailed interrogation reports of SIMI members arrested in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh in recent times.
Some of these interrogations clearly say that there are many more Indians who have been trained in explosives.
In Jaipur, details of all phone calls, running into several thousands, made to foreign destinations and to elsewhere in India are being carefully examined to see any pattern, and to pick up suspicious numbers. A massive surveillance of the phone calls and internet traffic of Jaipur and surroundings is also active.
In Delhi, investigators are combing through internet traffic data to analyse further the email from “Indian Mujahideen”. The same group had made similar claims over email after the serial blasts in courts in three UP towns last year. Investigators believe “Indian Mujahideen” is the front name given to the joint group of HuJI and SIMI members, who are behind almost every major bomb attack in India in recent years.
Meanwhile, police and intelligence officers from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Delhi and West Bengal are studying evidence and inputs they have collected over the past several months to crack the bomb blast case.
From the scattered clues the picture that is emerging is: A secretive network of HuJI and a faction of SIMI , receiving operational direction from Mohammed Amjad alias Khaja, is behind the attacks. After the former HuJI mastermind Shahid Bilal was killed in Karachi last year, Amjad has taken over the operations of HUJI in India, and they have established a high level of operational cohesiveness with the SIMI faction which preaches violence against India.
While that remains the big picture, what is troubling the investigators is their inability to crack open the intricate network maintained by this group, and its capability to strike repeatedly across Indian hinterland. The group’s signatures are visible in the three bomb blasts in Hyderabad last year, the Malegaon mosque attack and a series of blasts in Uttar Pradesh.
Besides, intelligence agencies now suspect the same group may be behind the 2006 train blasts of Mumbai, the 2005 Diwali-eve bomb attacks in Delhi, and some others.
While the leadership behind the terror strikes is now almost confirmed, what needs to be immediately cracked is the network of locals who are able to strike in almost every part of India.
The leadership remains in Pakistan and Bangladesh. “It is not just about Jaipur blasts, but also about preventing the next one,” says a senior intelligence source.
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