Why many blast cases remain unsolved

Fringe elements with a lack of proper motive who leave behind no trail for the intelligence agencies are making several of the recent blast cases difficult to solve. Vicky Nanjappa explains.

It is a new phenomenon to India -- chaotic terror, intelligence sources call it. What this means is blast cases that remain unsolved thanks to the lack of a proper trail. The number of unsolved blast cases has gone up recently and Wednesday's blast at the Delhi high court also points in a very similar direction.

The lack of a motive, the absence of specific intelligence and the lack of information on any module being behind the blast makes such cases tough nuts to crack.

Just after the 13/7 blasts in Mumbai, the Intelligence Bureau had said that there is a new pattern in the latest series of blasts. A few members are getting together and carrying out attacks and there is absolutely no trail whatsoever. No longer can one say that a module of a particular area has carried out a particular blast. When the police and the IB had probed into various incidents such as the Varanasi blasts, the Pune blasts or even the recent 13/7 attacks, they found there has been no sign that any of the modules in the nearby areas have been activated.

The fact that so many blast cases over the past two years have remained unsolved mysteries gives fringe elements the confidence to carry out blasts at will and in the days to come more such attacks are possible, security officials say.

The 13/7 probe pointed towards some fringe members of the Students Islamic Movement of India. These attacks do not have any specific motive. Gone are those days when members quote atrocities against their community, the Babri Masjid demolition or the Gujarat violence for carrying out attacks. It is an absolute state of chaos.

The IB says that despite the SIMI or the Indian Mujahideen breaking up and almost becoming non-existent, no specific effort has been made to resurrect these organizations. This has been done intentionally so that some members of this group take up activities on their own and create havoc.

There is no ideology left in such attacks anymore. Moreover, these attacks are carried out on a shoe string budget and this would mean some sympathiser who provides the money and hence there would not be a long money trail. This was witnessed in the case of the Bangalore blasts in 2008 in which T Nasir with the help of a couple of his workers had carried out the attacks.

There was no major planning involved and none of the bigwigs in any terror organisation were kept in the loop regarding this attack. In fact, it was one of the very first instances when the police realised that acts of terror could be carried out by fringe elements such as Nasir who were never on the radar.

Another aspect that has been witnessed in all these cases is that none of the members involved in such attacks have any criminal records.

Below is a list of the various cases in the past two years which have remained unsolved.

• The Pune German Bakery blast of February 2010 in which 17 people were killed. The police are still clueless.
• The Jama Masjid attack in Delhi of September 2010. There has not been any specific lead on this one as well.
• The Varanasi blast of December 2010. The leads went to the IM, but there is not a single concrete breakthrough to date.
• The blast outside the Delhi high court on May 25 2010. Once again the police are in the dark.
• The blast outside the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore on April 2010. The police have made one Salman alias Chotu as the suspect. But in reality there is no proper evidence to link him or the IM to that case.
• The Mumbai blasts of 13/7. Various theories, but in reality the police still continue to grope in the dark.