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| India-Pakistan | |
| Pencil timers, identikits could lead to ‘bigger plot’ | |
| 2006-07-13 | |
| New Delhi - Investigators probing the 7/11 attacks in Mumbai are confident that they will be able to crack the ‘bigger conspiracy’ after obtaining several crucial leads like the pencil timers recovered from three of the seven sites. Investigators have rounded up over 150 people in Mumbai and prepared identikits of suspects based on eyewitness accounts of passengers behaving strangely before the explosions. They have also recovered timers hidden in pencils in at least three of the seven blast sites. The train bombings in Mumbai preceded by a series of blasts in Srinagar killed more than 200 people and injured over 700. ‘Both the strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and Mumbai subsequently have been coordinated. We have some pinpointed information of some modules leading to the bigger plot but it will be premature to disclose it at this juncture,’ highly-placed intelligence sources told IANS. ‘However, we are confident that this conspiracy will be cracked shortly. An operation of this magnitude leaves behind certain footprints,’ said an investigator refusing to disclose the vital clues that had been obtained. The meticulousness of the operation, the explosives used and the use of remote control devices has raised the possibility of the Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) being involved, perhaps in collaboration with local groups. Despite the LeT’s stout denial, security agencies believe that only this organisation has the wherewithal to organise such an attack because of its widespread network of fund managers who are able to organise money and explosives. Just this year alone, police in Delhi were able to thwart several attempts to smuggle in arms and explosives. ‘We have intercepts in the past to show where terror has been outsourced. This is a clever strategy to reveal that responsibility does not lie with one single organisation,’ said one investigator in Mumbai. According to investigators, the nature of the explosions in the trains suggest that over 50 kg of RDX would have been used for assembling the bombs. Though the needle of suspicion points to the LeT, the several investigating teams formed after the blasts are also looking at the possibility of the involvement of a cadre of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), being trained up outlawed outfits in Bangladesh. After the March 7 twin explosions in Varanasi, it was discovered that the militants who engineered the attack were reportedly trained by the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jijad-i-Islami (HUJI). Similarly, central security agencies established links between the mastermind of the Dec 28 attack on Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science and the LeT. Three persons detained - two in Bangalore and one in Hyderabad - were found to have links with the Al-Hadees group based in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. ‘The LeT has cells in both countries,’ said an intelligence official. In fact, five months ago, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) had prepared a position paper of the camps in Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia that were providing support to terror outfits operating in India.
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| Posted by:Steve |