National

Separate wing carried out blasts in South?

NEW DELHI: Police have a strong suspicion that two wings of the Indian Mujahideen were involved in the serial blasts across the country.

While they have confirmed that the group busted by them was involved in the blasts at Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Uttar Pradesh, they suspect that another wing of the outfit carried out terror acts in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Surat.

The outfit, through an e-mail owning up the Jaipur blasts, had announced setting up of two wings for North and South India as also a suicide squad.

During interrogation, Saif Ahmad, arrested in connection with the Delhi blasts, is said to have disclosed that Mohammad Bashir, the Indian Mujahideen head, was very upset when he came to know that none of the bombs planted in Surat had exploded. However, he appreciated the manner in which the foot soldiers had chosen locations for planting the bombs. “But configuration of those bombs was different from those used in Delhi and Ahmedabad and so it appears that another branch of the umbrella network had planted the bombs in Surat, and this was in the know of Bashir,” said a police officer.

Twenty-four-year-old Bashir, who allegedly considered Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda his guiding force, gave great importance to indoctrination of his men. A compact disc seized by the police contained provocative speeches instilling motivation for carrying out terror acts.

Saif has allegedly disclosed that initially there were plans to plant 10 bombs in Delhi, but one of them could not be assembled properly and hence was destroyed. Five of the bombs exploded and three live ones were detected. According to Saif, two bombs had been planted near Regal cinema, one of which has not been accounted for.