Author: Express news service
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 14, 2011
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/no-leads-but-method-and-timing-point-to-im/817345/0
Even as police teams were gathering vital
forensic evidence from the three blast sites in Mumbai tonight, investigators
revealed that the needle of suspicion pointed towards the Indian Mujahideen
(IM), a terror outfit that has claimed responsibility for previous blasts
in Pune, Delhi and Jaipur.
Mumbai Police Commissioner Arup Patnaik, however,
was not willing to speculate about the perpetrators involved. "It definitely
appears that it is a terrorist attack. However, at this stage we do not know
who is responsible. I do not want to speculate further," said Patnaik.
But sources probing the serial blasts pointed
out similarities in the manner in which previous blasts were executed by the
IM in Lucknow and Varanasi in 2007, and in Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008, by
triggering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) placed on bicycles left in
crowded areas.
The Mumbai Police have established that the
IEDs in the Zaveri Bazaar blast in South Mumbai was similarly hidden in an
umbrella left behind on a two-wheeler.
"Previous IM blasts involved IEDs fitted
with timers that have been triggered from remote locations, similar to the
blasts in Mumbai. Another similarity is the fact that projectiles have been
found at the blast sites," said a senior Mumbai Police officer.
The police have found that the IED used in
the blast at Dadar's Kabutarkhana area in Central Mumbai was concealed in
a junction box providing light to the signboard on the roof of a bus stop.
ATS officers involved in previous operations against the IM's network were
quick to point out that some of the unexploded IEDs recovered from Surat in
July 2008 were also concealed behind signboards.
After the Pune German Bakery blast probe led
the ATS to a terror base in Udgir, an obscure location in Latur district,
top state police officers had conceded that the IM had an operational network
in Maharashtra, and that its network had even spread beyond Mumbai and Pune
to new areas. An extensive rural network is suspected to have been created
in the Marathwada region, they had said.
However, some officers pointed out that previous
experiences have shown that the IM is quick to claim responsibility for terror
attacks by sending out e-mails to media houses, which was not the case in
the latest attack so far.
There is another curious coincidence - the
date of the attack - that investigators point out. "The Indian Mujahideen
executed the German Bakery blast in Pune in 2010 on February 13, the serial
blasts in Delhi in 2008 on September 13, and the Jaipur serial blasts in 2008
on May 13. The serial blasts here on July 13 seem to have followed the same
pattern," said a Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) official, who
did not wish to be named.
Barely 24 hours before the blasts, Maharashtra
ATS chief Rakesh Maria had announced on Tuesday evening that two IM operatives,
Mohammed Mobin Abdul Shakoor Khan and his cousin Ayub Raja Amin Shaikh, had
been arrested from Mumbai's Mankhurd suburb. The duo had allegedly stolen
vehicles that were planted by the IM in Ahmedabad and Surat in 2008.
