Mumbai, 31 Oct. (AKI) - As India mourns the 61 victims of the three simultaneous bomb attacks in New Delhi on Saturday, intelligence sources quoted by the Indian press, believe the carnage was the work of Kashmiri separatist groups sponsored by the al-Qaeda network. The attacks were claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself Islami Inquilabi Mahaz. Intelligence sources are linking the terror attacks to the presence in India of Mohammed Majoodi, an Islamist expert in car-bombs who until recently was based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. | "Have turban, will travel. Wire Majoodi, Jeddah" |
Earlier this month, Indian national security experts issued an alert for the presence in India of Majoodi. It was the tip-off of Majoodi's presence in the country on 10 October that led the US embassy to step up security around all embassies consulates and major US interests in India.
Senior intelligence experts believe Majoodi is linked to the Kashmiri militant groups Jaish-e-Mohammed e Lashkar-e-Toiba. The Indian newspapers and television insist that investigators are focusing tightly on this latter group and say the unknown Islami Inquilabi Mahaz is just one of the names under which it operates. "It's a Pakistani group and it is acting on behalf of Lashkar," said Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi. | We could have told him that |
Lashkar-e-Toiba, based in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, is one of the most aggressive in the civil conflict which has seen more than 44,000 victims in 14 years and Indian intelligence experts, accuse the powerful Pakistan intelligence services (ISI) of sponsoring it.
The Indian dailies stress that the shadow of suspicion extending to Pakistani institutions, poses a delicate problem for prime minister Manmohan Singh, who has embarked on dialogue with Islamabad to bring peace to Kashmir, a dialogue which seems to have been helped by the climate of solidariety generated by the 8 October earthquake. India has decided to open the highly militarised Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border, in five points in order to allow families and relief items to cross from one side to the other. |