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Major breakthrough in north India blasts

The Delhi police on Saturday said it has solved 25 of the 37 bomb blasts in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab since December 1996. This follows the arrests of four people, including two Bangladeshis.

Police Commissioner Tilak Raj Kakkar informed reporters that the brain behind the blasts were Abdul Karim alias Tunda, who is also responsible for the serial blasts in Bombay. The Inter Services Intelligence-aided criminal was still absconding. He is learnt to be hiding in Bangladesh, the commissioner said.

While several agencies were involved in the investigation, it was a Delhi police team which zeroed in on the culprits and arrested them on Friday in the capital and Ghaziabad.

Of the 25 Delhi blast cases since February 1997, Kakkar said, 18 had been wound up. The four arrested -- Harun alias Raju and Mussa alias Vipin (a Bangladeshi national), Shakeel and Asif alias Kamran -- have given the sleuths valuable information about the remaining seven blasts.

Twentyone people were killed and more than 400 injured in the blasts which kept sleuths clueless for several months.

Kakkar said the crime branch had formed a team under Deputy Commissioner of Police Karnal Singh, who was assisted by Additional DCP (crime) Alok Kumar, ACPs Ravi Shanker and Gyanendra Singh. The team, which visited all the blast sites in Delhi, Sonepat, Panipat, Jalandhar, Ambala, Bhatinda and Ludhiana, narrowed down the search to five persons who used to stay in guest houses, in the city hit, on the day of the explosion.

The team also followed certain subscribers of the Times of India, Nav Bharat Times, Punjab Kesri, Amar Ujala and Hind Samachar as these newspapers were used to wrap the bombs.

Kakkar said the past record of various blasts which had taken place in Bombay and adjoining areas were checked. It was found that the bombs used in Bombay and Delhi had certain similarities. The nerve centre of the blasts in Delhi was found to be in the walled city area -- in Filmistan, Azad market and Sadar Bazar. Two members of the team spent months in the Sadar Bazar area. Finally, the search narrowed down to a house, which was kept under surveillance.

On Friday, two persons who were seen coming out of the house, were followed and nabbed. Their interrogation revealed they were Bangladeshi nationals, sent by Tunda from Dhaka to survey areas, particularly Lucknow, Ludhiana and Delhi. Their mission, it came out, was to cause explosions in the name of jihad.

Kakkar said the interrogation further revealed they were to meet one Asif alias Kamran. When they went to his house they were informed that Asif would meet them at Sadar Bazar railway station, behind Hanifi Masjid at 1830 hours.

A trap was laid under ACP Ravi Shanker's supervision, and two persons, who identified themselves as Asif and Shakeel, were apprehended. A revolver and 10 cartridges were recovered from Asif. From Shakeel, the police recovered two cylinders and explosive material.

The duo's interrogation revealed they were using a factory at Pilukhua in Ghaziabad for a base, from where the police recovered a huge quantity of explosive material.

Asif revealed he had gone to Pakistan in 1989-90 at the age of 13. He had made contact with Tunda there. It was Tunda, finding that Asif was a Delhiite, who insisted he be sent down there for arranging bomb blasts.

Asif, for whom Tunda had arranged a Pakistani citizenship, was trained by the Lashkar-e-Toiba group. He revealed that an organisation, the Markaz-a-Dawat-ul-Irshad, was collecting funds to instigate persons for terrorist activities in India. The target was youths in the 18 to 25 age group.

Kakkar said Asif worked mostly alone. Only on one occasion did he take Shakeel along, to train him in planting bombs. The commissioner revealed that at present a group was undergoing training in Muzaffarabad, of which 18 militants were expected to arrive in Delhi and adjoining areas.

The future targets of the culprits were Hardwar, Mussoorie, Shimla, Lucknow and Ludhiana. They had already arranged for RDX and sophisticated weapons through their contacts in Bangladesh, Nepal and Kashmir. Asif had also collected Rs 650,000 through hawala channel for establishing hideouts and organising militant activities.

The interrogation also revealed that the ISI was mobilising various militant organisations and sending Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to India to cause disturbances and communal disharmony.

Kakkar said there was no connection between the Delhi blasts and the recent ones in Tell us what you think of this report