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Mumbai Train blasts : Police on the verge of breakthrough |
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Maharashtra Police say that they are on the verge of cracking the 7/11 terror attack on suburban trains in Mumbai. They conveyed their optimism to Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal in New Delhi on Wednesday, Sept. 13. The cops were confident that they would be close to wrapping up one of the most extensive probes and widespread manhunts by a police force in the country.
Maharashtra police also claimed to have picked up significant leads on the terrorist attacks in Malegaon on Friday, Sept. 8. They have tracked down the shops that sold the bicycles used to plant the explosives at various places.
While officials refused to divulge more for fear of compromising the attempt to pick up suspects, it is learnt that the investigation has corroborated the initial assessment that the Mumbai and Malegaon attacks were linked and devised to trigger communal conflagration.
As a follow up of the probe, the 30-odd youth picked up from Hindu-dominated pockets in Malegaon as well as from Nanded for suspected links to the group suspected to be behind the attack on a mosque in Parbani, have been let off. They had been questioned as cops did not want to rule out the possibility of groups of the Bajrang Dal-kind plotting “revenge scripts” for the Mumbai bombings. “They have been released since there was no evidence against them”, said a senior intelligence functionary.
Sources said the police have linked the two cases through the nature of explosives, finesse and techniques of execution, the timing of attacks and planning. In fact, it was leads gathered from the Mumbai suspects that are expected to lead investigators to those behind the Malegaon attack.
While the terrorists had, in picking a Muslim target in Malegaon, planned to trigger communal unrest, the attack has underlined that sects like those of Barelvis, who adhere to “un-Islamic” practices like lighting candles at graveyards of ancestors on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat, are considered expendable by terrorists drawn from fundamentalist sects like Deobandis and Ahl-e-Hadis.
The forensic report of Nashik laboratory has indicated a practised hand at terror, indicating that it was ammonium nitrate with RDX and gasoline. The mixture is similar to the one used in the train bombings.
While officials had initially ruled out substantial presence of RDX in the lethal concoction, the forensic report has made it clear that the explosives were not crude devices. A senior Home Ministry official said, “Given the background and states involved like Maharashtra and Gujarat, it will revolve around security scenario. The Centre is concerned about the LeT terror network spreading across Maharashtra. While the seizures of RDX and automatic guns in Aurangabad, Malegaon and Beed in May had set alarm bells ringing in North Block, the sensational bombings carried out with apparent ease, has jolted the Centre.”
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