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Police see Lashkar hand in twin blasts

By Our Special Correspondent

MUMBAI SEPT. 10. Mumbai Police are becoming increasingly confident that the Lashkar-e-Taiba orchestrated many blasts in Mumbai since December 2002, including the blasts on August 25 at the Gateway of India and Jhaveri Bazaar, which killed 52 persons. The role of other outfits is being discounted, but a formal announcement on the LeT's role is yet to be made.

Police say the explosive used in the August 25 blasts was not RDX, though the Maharashtra Forensic Science Laboratory said it actually was RDX. There is no change in the opinion of the forensic experts here, but the Mumbai Police are awaiting the report of the Central Forensic Laboratory in Chandigarh.

Police feel that 25 kg of gelatine was used in each of the taxis which were blown up. Their insistence, which runs counter to the findings of the forensic experts, is based on two points: the confessions made during the interrogation of the four persons detained on the basis of inputs from the taxi driver who took one team to the Gateway of India and the recovery of a cache of gelatine sticks in their home.

Not merely did the disclosure by the arrested family of Syed Mohammed Hanif helped the police to go along with the theory that gelatine was the main explosive, "with the CNG tank in the boot adding to the intensity of the blast", but eyewitness accounts confirmed that Hanif, with his small daughter in tow, was "weighed down under the load of the bag he carried to the taxi". That helped peg the quantum to 25 kg per blast.

Well-placed sources told The Hindu that Hanif's ``manner'', with a daughter tagging along and stumbling ``with a heavy bag on his shoulders" attracted attention and when Crime Branch operatives questioned people in the slum neighbourhood, "this particular instance drew attention". So, the source said, police go by the view that gelatine was used.

The local forensic estimate was that 10 kg of RDX was used in each blast. If the use of RDX and not gelatine is confirmed by the CFSL, then police would have to recommence the probe and also explain how it could have been brought to Mumbai.

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