By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
Ahmedabad (Gujarat): Investigating agencies probing the serial bomb blasts in Ahmadabad claimed to have got some leads and are supposed to be working on them.
Addressing the mediapersons on 29th July 2008, a top official who is part of the investigating team claimed to get the leads but didn’t name any terrorist organization.
As many as 20 bomb blasts in a span of 70 minutes ripped through the capital city of Ahmedabad on 26th July in which 49 people were killed and more than 100 injured.
The state investigating agencies have also put the various e-mails sent to television channels under scrutiny as it considers them a definite clue for the involvement of a terrorist organization.
Former SIMI activist Abdul Halim has been taken on remand by the police for fourteen days. The police said that they are grilling him at present, although they refused to give any details about what he has revealed so far.
The police claimed that Abdul Halim who was wanted in connection with the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat also played an active role in Saturday’s bombings.
Investigation into the Ahmadabad serial blasts also focuses on three persons who were detained on Monday while traveling in a WagonR car from Surat to Surendranagar. Abdul Qadir, Hasil Mohamad and Ibrahim were arrested by the police during a check of vehicles which were going outside Ahmadabad.
They are alleged to have been involved in a case related to the recovery of RDX a few years back in Mangrol in Junagadh district.
British currency amounting to Rs 2,00,000 and Rs 85,000 was found concealed beneath their car seats.
Moreover, amidst the investigation into the low intensity bomb blasts in Bangalore and the serial bomb blast in Ahmadabad, state’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Tuesday arrested a suspected Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) linkman Mohammad Mustaq Ahmed, 30, from his home at Gopalnagar area in Murshidabad district.
But till now it is not clear that the LeT militant had any role in the serials bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmadabad.
The police is of the opinion that Surat was possibly the next on the terrorists’ radar as a live bomb was recovered on Monday evening. It was almost at the same place that the police recovered a car laden with explosives, besides another explosives-laden car in the Punamgaon locality and a live bomb near a private hospital on City Light road, on Sunday.
People from Navi Mumbai area have also been suspected by the Police to be involved in the blasts, because the e-mail and the explosive-laden cars found in Surat have been traced to that area. Surat Police said both cars were found to have been “stolen” from Navi Mumbai.
The police is investigating whether the vehicles still belonged to the original owners or had been sold, this is another very important aspect of the serial blasts which is under investigation. The police claims that a third car of the same make, as were the two found in Surat, was also stolen from Navi Mumbai and was used to trigger the huge blast outside the trauma centre in the government civil hospital in Ahmedabad. All the three vehicles carried fake numbers with Vadodara registration.
Police is giving special attention to Vadodara for investigations as the fake number plates found on all the cars used in terror incident had entered the city from Vadodara.
Gujarat crime branch said that it is also co-ordinating with other state police in order to find out the links of pan-national groups involved in the attack.
On the other hand three days after a series of blasts in Ahmedabad, on 29 July,2008 police has claimed to have found 18 unexploded bombs in in the last five hours in Surat on Tuesday. The bombs were found near the Ladeshwar Police post, Santosh Nagar vegetable market and the Varachha area in the diamond city.
A conspicuously new terror group, Indian Mujahideen, is supposed to have claimed responsibility for the attack. Five minutes before the first blast in Ahmadabad, the group had sent an e-mail, saying that the serial blast was in revenge for the 2002 riots in Gujarat.
Initial investigations have found that the two abandoned cars, which were found on Sunday, packed with a large quantity of explosives were stolen from Navi Mumbai near Mumbai.
Another abandoned car found after the blasts at Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital was also stolen.
Surat remains tense since initial leads that are emerging from the investigations indicate that the attackers had planned to strike Ahmedabad and Surat simultaneously. In fact, the two WagonR cars found there, as well as the one seized from three people heading towards Surendranagar on Monday, hold the key to the investigations.
All three WagonRs had been stolen from Navi Mumbai over the last one month. Police said that the cars were stolen from Sanpada, Nerul and Vashi in Mumbai. Two cars were stolen on July 8 and 15.
Meanwhile, police have detained one RTO agent with regard to the stolen cars.
Toll tax records show the cars travelled from Navi Mumbai to Surat to Vadodara to enter Ahmedabad and left the city to re-enter Vadodara.
In the other side of the story various Muslim organisations across the country have condemned the serial bomb blasts in severe and strongest terms to the extent of terming it as a crime against humanity, and a black spot on the name of religion.
Muslim clerics Tuesday staged a “silent fast” to protest the serial bombings in Bangalore and Ahmedabad and said the terrorists behind the acts were a “black spot” on their religion.
“The terrorists are neither faithful to the Muslims nor the Hindus. They are a black spot on our religion and we will punish them,” M.A. Siddiqui, president of the All India United Muslim Morcha, said.
The demonstrators, numbering over 100, with white ribbons tied around their mouths, staged their protest in the GPO park of Hazratganj area in Lucknow.