Forensic experts have determined that the explosive devices used in Thursday’s blast at the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti closely resemble those placed in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid five months ago — a fact which raises the prospect that the same terror group may have executed both strikes.Tests conducted on an unexploded device recovered from the shrine late on Thursday night, as well as shrapnel recovered from the bomb that detonated killing three, have shown that both devices were packed with dynamite. India proscribed the production of nitroglycerine-based explosives like dynamite in 2004, but large stocks are believed to be still available on the black market. As at the Mecca Masjid, the bombs used in Ajmer were designed to be triggered by a mobile phone’s built-in alarm clock, which was set to 6:10 p.m.
Rajasthan police sources said the second bomb, stuffed inside a bag which also contained a crude map of the shrine, probably failed to explode because the phoneÂ’s speaker did not generate a voltage adequate to charge the detonator. Similar mobile phone malfunctions led to the failure of a second bomb planted in the Mecca Masjid and the car bombs fabricated by Bangalore engineering student Kafeel Ahmed for use in Glasgow and London earlier this year. Forensic experts said the fault was most likely caused by the use of mobile phones with low-grade components.
Rajasthan police investigators have arrived in Hyderabad to question suspects held for the Mecca Masjid bombings. Karachi-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami terrorist Abdul Mohammad Shahid, who also uses the code-name ‘Bilal,’ is wanted by Interpol for his alleged role in the Mecca Masjid bombings, as well as the subsequent serial bombings in Hyderabad this August. Rajasthan police sources noted that the Islamist terror networks, of which Shahid was a part, were known to have used Ajmer as a transit point in the past.
In December 2005, police in Ajmer interdicted a consignment of three Kalashnikov assault rifles, 229 cartridges and 15 detonators hidden in a truck carrying marble to Hyderabad. Investigators claimed that the truckÂ’s driver, Baramulla resident Shabbir Ahmed, had been tasked by the Hizb-ul-MujahideenÂ’s Pakistan-based chief, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, with delivering the weapons to terror cell in Hyderabad. Ahmed, a one-time operative for the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, had joined the Islamist Hizb-ul-Mujahideen after training in Pakistan in 1990.
Shabbir Ahmed told the Rajasthan police that the weapons were intended for Mujib Ahmed, a key figure in the terror networks now run by Shahid. Ahmed had spent several years in jail for his role in the 1990 assassination of Additional Superintendent of Police Krishna Prasad. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released by the Andhra Pradesh government in 2004 as part of a controversial Independence Day goodwill gesture.
Soon after Mujib AhmedÂ’s release from prison, investigators found that he reactivated his links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. When Mujib was re-arrested in the wake of the Ajmer weapons haul, police discovered that he had produced several films in which he appealed for funds for his new terror operations from Islamist sympathisers in West Asia.
Amjad Ali, who was among MujibÂ’s most trusted lieutenants, was responsible for recruiting Shahid. Ali, who the Central Bureau of Investigation held responsible for the assassination of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya, is thought to have despatched Shahid and at least 20 other Hyderabad men to train at the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami facilities in Pakistan after the 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat. Several members of Mujib AhmedÂ’s network, including Nalgonda resident Abdul Rehman, were arrested for their alleged role in the 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
