Mumbai, July 13: The mastermind behind the pre-Diwali blasts in Delhi in October last year is suspected to be the brain behind Tuesday's serial explosions in Mumbai's suburban trains, police sources said today.
Rahil, a Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) operative who is suspected to have planned and executed the pre-Diwali Delhi blasts that killed over 60 persons in October last year, is thought to be the key person involved in planning Tuesday's blasts, they said.
Mumbai police has shortlisted Rahil and his associate Imtiaz along with one Zaibuddin Ansari as the prime suspects on the basis of information gathered from independent sources and intelligence agencies, police sources said.
While intelligence agencies who have been tracking Rahil and Imtiaz for a long time now, traced him last in Bangladesh, Ansari, who is wanted in connection with the Aurangabad arms and explosives case, is also suspected to have fled to Bangladesh.
The police suspect that since Rahil, Imtiaz and Ansari have affiliation with banned LeT, they could have jointly planned and executed the blasts in Mumbai.
Since Ansari's links with outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India have already been established by the ATS, it is suspected that the blasts were jointly executed by a LeT module with the help of SIMI, sources said.
Inputs from intelligence agencies have also revealed names of two more persons Faiyyaz Khan and Bashiruddin Siddiqui, who is stated to be resident of neighbouring Thane district, but no further clues about their involvement in Tuesday's blasts.
Sources said the ATS and Mumbai Police have collected a volume of information about outstation calls made from PCOs at railway stations and airports and the calls made to Middle-East countries and some countries of South-East Asia were being checked.
Mumbai Police teams have also launched an operation to check whether the railway and aircraft bookings on July 11 and 12 had any group bookings or even individual booking of a similar pattern or destination.
The data has been collected and is being processed, the sources said.
Meanwhile, the Mahim police today virtually collected piles of materials from railway tracks at the Mahim station, where one of the seven blasts had taken place, to collect possible clues about the nature of bomb and explosives, the sources said.
A heap of materials, that included electronic circuits (probably of gadgets carried by passengers), was collected, and sent to the ATS and will be examined by forensic experts, sources said.
Mahim police, however, denied the circuits collected from the tracks were those of the exploded bombs, saying such circuits would not withstand the explosives.
Over 200 suspected SIMI activists have been rounded up from Mumbai, adjoining Thane and other areas of the state last night and sources said they were being individually interrogated to get further clues about the blasts.
A total of seven sketches have been prepared by Mumbai police with the help of persons who claimed to have seen suspicious looking persons on board the trains that were hit by the blasts. The sketches have been circulated to crime branch unit and ATS teams but will not be made public for at least a day or two, sources said.
Meanwhile, the Western Railway has installed CCTVs at seven railway stations hit by the blasts and decided to hire an expert security agency to suggest a tailor-made security set up to fight against terrorist threasts and secure passengers and railway installations.
CCTVs have been installed at Churchgate, Mumbai Central, Dadar, Bandra, Bandra Terminus, Andheri and Borivali to keep tab on passengers moving inside, Western Railways General Manager, Rajkamal Rao told reporters here today.
The CCTVs were installed within 12 hours after the blasts, Rao said, admitting these CCTVs should have been installed earlier since they are already in place at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus . He attributed the delay to the long procedures that have to be followed during procurement.
Bureau Report
First Published: Thursday, July 13, 2006, 00:00