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Cops find more leads against Hindu ultras

From Sunday’s blast site, the Kanpur police seized a large amount of explosives, including potassium nitrate, similar to that used in terror strikes.

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Death of Kanpur bomb makers strengthens suspicions

NEW DELHI: The explosion that killed two Bajrang Dal leaders on Sunday night in Kanpur when they were making bombs reinforces suspicions that at least some of the terror strikes of the recent past can be traced to a small fringe of Hindu fundamentalists. Investigators especially point to the blasts at Delhi’s Jama Masjid in April 2006 and the Ajmer Sharif dargah in October 2007.

From Sunday’s blast site, the Kanpur police seized a large amount of explosives, including potassium nitrate, similar to that used in terror strikes. Besides, there were hand grenades, timers, over two kg of pellets and pins, several batteries, and some 50 metres of electric wires.

One of those killed was a former convener of the Bajrang Dal’s Kanpur city unit, and the other an active member of the group, according to the Kanpur police.

Several sources in the intelligence and security establishment say they see a distinctive pattern in the bomb blasts at the historic mosques — the Jama Masjid in Delhi and Durgah Ajmer Sharif.

Besides, some intelligence operatives also do not subscribe to claims by local investigators that the Students Islamic Movement of India was behind the blasts at the Malegaon mosque in September 2006 and the May 2007 blasts at the Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad. It is significant that the CBI which took over the Malegaon case several months ago has not yet come up with any credible breakthroughs, through the local police had blamed it all on Simi.

More than one senior official involved in investigating the Jama Masjid blast told DNA that they had “clear indications” that some Hindu fanatics could be behind the bomb blast. Nothing was ever said in public.

Over the past few years, there has been a string of developments, especially in Maharashtra, that calls for a broader investigation into the serial blasts across India. In these incidents evidence of Hindu fringe groups making bombs and trying to disrupt peace have repeatedly emerged.  

The latest was in June this year, when several members of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti and the Sanatan Sanstha were arrested in Maharashtra for planting crude bombs in several places.

The first clear sign that members of fringe Hindu groups are into making explosives emerged in Nanded in April 2006 when at least two of them were killed and four others injured while making bombs. Investigations into the Nanded blast had also pointed to the possibility of such elements being responsible for the blast at the Prabhani mosque in November 2003, which went off injuring over 25 people.

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