BOMBAY, 24 October 2006 — Incriminating evidence showing the involvement of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the Bombay blasts last July will perhaps never be found.

Even the confessions of those arrested and accused in the case do not provide convincing evidence of Pakistan’s involvement in the blasts, as several questions are being raised in the probe.

According to police sources speaking exclusively to Arab News, the failure is being attributed to the infighting between the two senior cops of the Maharashtra police.

The foremost and most well-known dispute is between the state Director General Dr. Pavender Singh Pasricha and Bombay Police Commissioner Anami Narayan Roy.

When the bomb blasts took place, Roy refused to comment saying the blasts occurred in the jurisdiction of the railways and not in the city.

The responsibility of investigating the case was then handed over to the Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS), which again does not come under the jurisdiction of Police Commissioner Roy but directly under the control of Pasricha. The media was informed that Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil and state DGP Pasricha would address the press conference, which was to be held at three in the afternoon. But when the press conference began it was addressed by Roy.

The state Home Minister R. R. Patil did not attend and Pasricha arrived for a few minutes, to congratulate the ATS and have a hug and photo session with Roy.

Questions were asked as to why Roy was asked to speak at the press conference and why Pasricha failed to address it and why Patil missed the conference. These are questions for which there are no answers.

A lack of coordination, personal rivalry, disunity and political games have resulted in the failure of Maharashtra police to capture the real culprits behind the terrorist attacks. It would not be wrong to blame the home minister and the state police chief for bungling this case that has seen hundreds of deaths and injuries, said a senior high-ranking retired police official.

Roy, in spite of not being the chief of the ATS, told the media with great fanfare that the ATS had cracked the July 11 train blasts case, but now the ATS has sought two months’ time from a Maharashtra court to file a charge sheet against the arrested accused, indicating that it was struggling to gather evidence.

The request for time indicates that the claim made by Roy on behalf of the ATS had been made in haste and that the confessional statements and results of narco-analysis tests coupled with material, and corroborative and circumstantial evidence that would provide clinching evidence seem wanting. One has only to consider the following faux pas in the investigations.

The ATS claimed that the blasts were carried out by 11 Pakistani terrorists with the help of local Lashkar-e-Taiba militants. But the list of absconders mentions only three Pakistani nationals and the list gives the names, but not their roles in the blasts, their area of origin or operation.

The list does not mention the name of Ehsanullah, who Roy described at the press conference as the person who brought 15-20 kilograms of RDX to Bombay for triggering the blasts, nor did Roy say as to how Ehsanullah got the RDX and whether it was supplied to him en route or when he left Pakistan.

Roy on the basis of information supplied by ATS claimed that 11 Pakistani terrorists arrived in batches through three different routes a month ago to trigger the blasts. The DIG of ATS Gujarat Vanjara said that what is being claimed by Maharashtra police remains unsubstantiated.

The ATS has so far failed to establish how the two accused Kamal and Majid escaped from Bombay after the blasts and reached Bihar and West Bengal respectively. Nor has it mentioned how local operatives involved in the blasts continued to stay and work in Bombay.

Again the ATS claimed that the bombs were made from pressure cookers and placed on the trains by two teams. The ATS is yet to establish where the cookers were bought from and how they were placed in first class compartments of the trains.

Jai Jeet Singh, the deputy inspector general of police of ATS said that the investigations are not yet complete and will take some time.

The entire serial blasts case has been badly messed up by the Maharashtra police leaving space to be mocked by the world and giving opportunity to Pakistan to have the last laugh.