The Hindu : 'SIMI hand' in Ghatkopar blast suspected

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jul 30, 2003

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'SIMI hand' in Ghatkopar blast suspected

By Mahesh Vijapurkar

MUMBAI JULY 29. Members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India or the Al-e-Azeez, an offshoot of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, may have triggered the blast in a bus at Ghatkopar that took three lives and injured several last night, official sources said today on the basis of the similarities in five previous explosions since December 2002. The Shiv Sena-BJP combine, meanwhile, announced that a bandh would be observed from Tuesday midnight to 6 p.m. on Wednesday to express the "people's anger".

In Monday's blast, two bombs placed under or on seats near the rear of the bus and exploded while it was moving on a busy arterial road. The mangled remains of the bus, the broken windows in buildings along the road close to the spot and the manner in which two autorickshaws just behind the bus were damaged indicate the strength of the explosives.

Although a probe has begun and the identities of the suspect organisations guessed, not much headway appears to have been made.

While the Sena chief, Bal Thackeray, called the bandh last night citing the need for Hindus to "show our unity", the party's executive president, Uddhav Thackeray, today asked, "how long are we to just keep counting the bodies?" Several Muslim organisations wanted the blast investigated "in an unbiased manner". The BJP's Gopinath Munde said the bandh "was an expression of our indignation".

While insisting that "there is no politics involved" in the bandh call, the Opposition said the Government had failed to curb the menace. The people were angry at "the blast after blast since December 2, 2002", it said. The official view was that the Mumbai Police had no prior tip-off from any Central agency, but the failure to smell a possible conspiracy remains unexplained. The Opposition zeroed in on this and suggested that "there has been a failure for want of appropriate leadership".

The Chief Minister, Sushilkumar Shinde, felt it was inappropriate to call for a bandh because "it solves no problems". He also promised that "arrests would be made soon".

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