By Mohammed Shafeeq and Murali Krishnan, IANS
Hyderabad/New Delhi : A nationwide hunt was underway Monday for the terrorists who massacred 42 lives in the worst terror attack in south India as Hyderabad observed a shutdown in memory of the dead and the injured.
Dozens of people were still in hospitals in Hyderabad, some in critical condition, after being injured in the near simultaneous horrific bombings at an open-air theatre and an eatery in the city Saturday evening.
Indian Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta said it had been established that RDX and another explosive called Neo Gel 90 were used in the blasts, after being brought in from Nagpur in Maharashtra.
Even as investigators wait for the forensic report on an unexploded bomb that was found in a nearby theatre to take the probe ahead, authorities are convinced that terrorist groups outside India were responsible for the blasts.
“Some possibilities have been identified and expressed which investigative agencies will be working on. It is not a new thing that there are elements who are outside this country, organisations outside this country, who have been trying to fuel these activities,” Gupta told IANS.
Home ministry sources pointed the finger of suspicion at the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami and the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad. “We are pursuing some vital leads to confirm our suspicions,” said one official.
Ten special teams have been formed to investigate the blasts. Some policemen have gone to Aurangabad in Maharashtra, and Bidar and Bangalore in Karnataka to hunt for leads.
The 42 dead – most died at Gokul Chat, a well-known eatery – included three children and six women besides seven engineering students from Maharashtra and two railway policemen from Madhya Pradesh.
The number of injured who required hospitalisation was put at 70.
The police have picked up 10 people, including a few employees of Gokul Chat, for questioning. They include three suspects who reportedly provided iron balls for making the bombs.
In Nagpur in Maharashtra, Sohail, the owner of Amin Explosives, was taken into custody.
Police alleged that the Neo Gel 90 explosive used in the unexploded bomb recovered from a cinema theatre after the twin blasts was made by his company.
Hyderabad, India’s biggest IT hub after Bangalore, shut down Monday to protest the terror bombings. But hoax bomb calls through the day kept security agencies on the edge.
Three hoax calls as well as two bomb scares sparked by unclaimed bags were reported, triggering panic. One such call was made to the Andhra Pradesh state secretariat, the seat of the government.
The entire complex – housing the offices of the chief minister and his cabinet colleagues – was evacuated while the police complete with sniffer dogs conducted a thorough check. But no explosives were found.
The Lumbini Park, a stone’s throw away from the secretariat on the banks of the Hussain Sagar Lake, was one of the sites of the twin blasts Saturday.
The response to the statewide shutdown, called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was almost total in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Life came to a near halt.
Only a few buses plied while schools, shops and business establishments, banks, cinema theatres were shut.
It also affected life throughout Telangana region of northern Andhra Pradesh. But the response was lukewarm in Rayalaseema and the coastal regions.
After the May 18 blast at the historic Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad that claimed nine lives, the city had received dozens of such calls. Five people were killed then in police firing.
The police have said they would not allow cinema theatres without metal detector facilities to open in Hyderabad. Only half a dozen of about 100 theatres in the cinema-crazy city have metal detectors to check visitors.
Shopping complexes have also been ordered to install metal detectors.
The warnings followed intelligence reports that more terror attacks could be expected in southern India, the country’s economic powerhouse.
Chief Minister Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy said available information pointed to the involvement of terrorist groups based in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
“The external agencies and external terrorist organisations are responsible for this,” he told reporters in Hyderabad.
Refusing to bow down to terrorism, a large number of citizens took part in a candle light demonstration Sunday night at Lumbini Park – where the first bomb went off.
Leaders of all political parties joined a peace meeting Monday. They paid tributes to the victims and vowed not to succumb to terrorism.
Telugu Desam Party leader and former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu asked Rajasekhara Reddy to quit, saying he had failed to prevent bomb attacks despite intelligence warnings in the wake of the Mecca Masjid bombing.