Bangalore blast: Accused wanted to AVENGE forefathers

The investigation into the blast near the Bharatiya Janata Party's office at Bangalore in April -- days before the Karnataka assembly elections -- appears to have hit a roadblock.

Police had initially suspected that terror outfit Al-Ummah was behind the attack.

After questioning some suspects in the case and analysing their call records, police believe that members of a fringe group from Tamil Nadu carried out the blast to avenge the “atrocities meted out to their forefathers”.

During questioning, some of the accused reportedly told police that their forefather were forced to convert to Islam after being harassed by upper-caste Hindus. The accused had been strongly influenced by the accounts of the atrocities meted out by the upper-castes and had decided to retaliate.

Police will take some time in putting together a charge-sheet based on such a sketchy theory.

They had also claimed that the suspects were nabbed on the basis of their phone records and one of them used a SIM card that belonged to an activist of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

“In case the attack is carried out by an organised group, there is a familiar pattern involved and we can rely on a database of earlier strikes. We are coordinating with other state police teams and tracking inputs from the Intelligence Bureau to crack this case as it is an inter-state issue,” said an official involved with the investigation.

Mobile phone records and SIM cards procured with the help of fake identification cards of the accused are a major part of the police evidence. 

The suspects, say police, were in touch with some residents of Kerala. The probe team has sought more information from their counterparts in the Kerala police.