By IANS,
Gandhinagar : There could be a “larger international conspiracy” behind the serial bombings in Ahmedabad Saturday that claimed 51 lives, a senior Gujarat minister said here Wednesday.
“With the evidence so far with us we can say that the Ahmedabad serial blasts could be part of a larger international conspiracy,” Minister of State for Home Amit Shah told reporters.
The attack in Ahmedabad was 12th in a series of terrorist incidents in the country this year and the modus operandi pointed to a common thread running through all of them, he said.
Admitting that no arrests for the blasts had been made so far, Shah clarified that Abdul Halim, an alleged operative of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), was arrested Sunday not for the blasts but for his earlier involvement in “jehadi activities” after the 2002 Gujarat violence. “His interrogation may unearth some clues,” he added.
With the evidence available, it seems that no “human bomb” was involved in the blast at the Civil hospital, Shah said.
As many as 2,000 police constables and sub-inspectors drawn from various parts of Gujarat were investigating the blasts and searching for leads even as the state government had also sent police teams to Rajasthan, Hyderabad and Maharashtra to interrogate prisoners lodged there and who have been arrested for terrorists activities, he said.
“If necessary, those prisoners could be brought to Gujarat for further interrogation on transfer orders,” the minister said.