BOMBAY, 29 October 2006 — Stung by criticism from all quarters for inept handling of the July serial train blasts cases, the Maharashtra police have filed charges in the case in a special court. The charge sheet accused Pakistani nationals of conspiracy in the July 11 Bombay blasts that left more than 20 people dead and 800 injured.
In the latest remand application to the court, the police have spelled out the role of other Indian operatives. The development comes two days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke of “credible evidence” of Pakistani involvement in the bombings.
Among the Pakistani accused, the charge sheet mentions the name of Azam Cheema, the Bahawalpur-based Lashkar-e-Taiba commander and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) operative. Saying that the police had established the identity of most of the accused, the charge sheet names the other Pakistani accused as Aslam, Hafizullah, Sabir, Abu Bakr, Kasam Ali, Ammu Jan, Abdul Razzak, Sohail Shaik and Ehsanullah.
Pune resident Rizwan Davare, an alleged illegal money remittances operator based in a Gulf country; Rahil Shaikh, the UK-based brother of blast accused Faisal and Muzammil; and Hafiz Zubair and Abdul Rehman, both based in Nepal, are the other accused wanted in the blasts case, the court was told.
K.P. Raghuvanshi, who heads the police team investigating the case, said detailed investigations have revealed that the bombs were assembled at the residence of Mohammed Ali in Govandi. He said Mohammed Mahid Mohammed Shafi had helped six of the Pakistanis in entering the country from Bangladesh. Police sources said these six were the ones who brought RDX explosives into Bombay, helped local operatives in assembling the bombs and planting them in trains.
They said Asif Khan Bashir Khan, alias Junaid, alias Abdullah headed the organized crime syndicate that orchestrated the serial bombings. Mohammed Sajid Marghoob Ansari, a resident of Mira Road who has a mobile phone repairing shop at Jogeshwari, had lent technical know-how to the Pakistanis.
Meanwhile, reports said a police team raided premises in the southern state of Kerala yesterday after preliminary interrogation of two suspected Pakistan-based militants. Investigative units were also sent to the southern city of Madras and northern Jammu and Kashmir state after the arrest of the militants in southern Mysore city on Friday. The militants were allegedly planning an attack in India’s information technology hub Bangalore.
“We are following the leads obtained so far from the arrested militants — Fahad Hai and Mohammed Ali Hussein — during interrogation and the incriminating material seized from them,” Mysore Police Commissioner Pravin Sood said.
He said the evidence included numbers and messages from the suspected militants’ cell phones and a satellite phone as well as data from a laptop computer. He said Fahad was a postgraduate in chemistry from the University of Karachi in Pakistan. Hussein came from Mansehra in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Fahad’s stepmother lives in Kerala and her home in the town of Calicut was raided by the police yesterday.
The two men were members of Pakistan-based militant group Al-Badr which has been fighting for an independent Kashmir.
“A team is visiting Kashmir to collect information on their terror networks operating in the northern state. Documents such as letterheads, correspondence and extremist literature recovered from their hide-out clearly indicate their links with Pakistan-based the Al-Badr militant outfit,” Sood was quoted as saying.
— Additional input from agencies
