Marri
Ramu
Sandeep
Joshi
The Hindu
Saturday,February
23,2013
Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai,
Coimbatore, Hubli were on radar
The death
toll in Thursday’s twin blasts in Hyderabad rose to 16 on Friday and the
condition of five of the 117 injured remained critical, even as investigators
intensified efforts to achieve a breakthrough and the police found a detonator
at one of the sites.
Thousands
of onlookers, besides political leaders, continued to throng the blast sites at
Dilsukhnagar, a bustling area in the south-eastern parts of Hyderabad.
Union
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, accompanied by Andhra Pradesh Governor E.S.L.
Narasimhan and Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, visited the sites on Friday
to get firsthand information about the first terror strike in the country after
Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru was executed.
Sources
in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said initial leads into the attack
pointed to a possible involvement of the Indian Mujahideen as the blasts
carried their trademark signature.
Hyderabad,
Bangalore, Mumbai, Coimbatore and Hubli, and Gujarat and other parts of
Maharashtra were specifically alerted by Central intelligence agencies that
terror groups were planning to launch attacks in retaliation to the hanging of
Guru, the sources said.
The
entire modus operandi of the blasts such as the use of bicycle, trigger,
ammonium nitrate and shrapnels and coordinated attacks in crowded places all
pointed to the Indian Mujahideen and the investigating agencies were looking
into various terror modules having links to Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and
Darbhanga in Bihar, the sources said.
The
agencies were trying to find out whether the attack was planned just after
Guru’s hanging, as carrying out a coordinated strike within a few days was a
difficult task, the sources said.
Islamabad
conference
The MHA
and investigating agencies had also taken notice of threats issued to India by
the United Jihad Council, a group of various Pakistan-based terror outfits, at
its conference held last week in Islamabad to pay tributes to Guru, where they
reportedly resolved to “avenge” his hanging.
Top
militants of the banned anti-India militant groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and
the Jaish-e-Mohammed had pledged to step up their anti-India activities after
the execution of Ajmal Kasab and Guru.
Amid the
chanting of slogans, media reports said, top leaders of the LeT, JeM, Al-Badr
Mujahideen, Jamiatul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen made anti-India
speeches. United Jihad Council chief Syed Salahuddin, who also heads the
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, asked all group members to step up attacks against India,
while senior JeM leader Mufti Asghar reportedly said that “we know how to take
revenge and we will take revenge.”
The MHA
sources said they were trying to find out whether any sleeper module was
activated after this meeting to carry out attacks.
A general
alert was sent to all the States after the hanging of Kasab, but after the
execution of Guru, more specific alerts were sent to the five cities and the
two States.
Besides a
general advisory sent to all the States on February 19, the specific
information was shared with the five cities and two States on February
21.
Though
the alerts were not definitive and did not specify the groups involved or
possible targets, the police chiefs of these cities were asked to step up
vigil. Similarly, other advisories talked about the LeT, JeM, Hizb and the
Indian Mujahideen planning to launch terror attacks.
Keywords:
Hyderabad twin blast, Dilsukhnagar blast, Sushilkumar Shinde, Indian Mujahideen, Central intelligence agencies alerts
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Courtesy
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