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| India-Pakistan |
| Cops look for SIMI links in Delhi blast |
| 2008-09-29 |
| Even as Delhi Police has not found Indian Mujahideen's signature in Saturday's Mehrauli blast, intelligence agencies are looking for possible SIMI (IM's parent body) footprints in the incident taking cues from what the outfit's leaders -- including its general secretary Safdar Nagori -- claimed before Madhya Pradesh cops five months back. Nagori had told police during his interrogation in April that SIMI had 125 hardcore cadre who were trained in its camps at Dharwad in Karnataka during 2005-07 and subsequently fanned out to run independent sleeper cells across the country. "Even though 25-odd SIMI activists have been arrested since then, over 100 of its men must be prowling in different cities with their modules remaining intact in Delhi as well where they have some illegal Bangladeshi nationals on their rolls as foot soldiers," said a senior official referring to Nagori's 50-page interrogation report. Sleuths also observed that Nagori's disclosure about the outfit's camps in Dharwad not taking up explosive training in detail may explain why the Mehrauli bomb appeared to be a crude one -- a handiwork of someone not well trained. Nagori had mentioned that the training for bomb-making remained exclusive for a select group of persons (who might have been arrested) and some others who had gone to Pakistan to learn the art. He told his interrogators that there were 30-40 trainees in Karachi during 2006-07. Similarly, Nagori and others had mentioned during their interrogation that special training in "bike riding" had been given to SIMI activists. Taking cue from such disclosures in April, IB sleuths now wonder whether the same bikers who got training in Dharwad camp had carried out the blast in Mehrauli -- a possibility which is being looked into now, particularly when Delhi Police continues to grope in the dark for leads. The home ministry has, meanwhile, postponed a northern zonal council meeting which was scheduled to be held in Shimla on Monday and instead called senior cops of anti-terrorist squad (ATS) of different states to discuss the terror issue here in the wake of Saturday's blast. CMs of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and HP and representatives of Delhi, Chandigarh and J&K were supposed to attend the gathering in Shimla. Sources in the ministry said the meeting of ATS cops would mainly be with the IB sleuths who have been coordinating with the state police in conducting operations in the wake of serial blasts here on September 13. |
| Posted by:Fred |