According to police sources, coded information found in a diary in the possession of the Babbar Khalsa militants led the Punjab Police to arrest three more members of the same group in Amritsar on June 26. All that Vadodara Police Commissioner J Mahapatra would say, however, was that ``revelations by the militants have helped the Punjab police in cracking some militant-related cases.''

According to Intelligence sources, interrogations of the militants arrested in Vadodara and Amritsar had revealed some intriguing similarities. To begin with, the Amritsar militants Gurlal Singh, Gurdev Singh and Paramjeet Singh said they had been asked by an associate of Babbar Khalsa chief Wadhwa Singh to smuggle the RDX consignment through the international border in the Jammu sector and await further orders in Amritsar.

``They were not told where the RDX was supposed to be delivered, nor the name of the person who'd contact them in Amritsar'', an Intelligence officer said.

The militants arrested in Vadodara, too, had said they'd been asked by a Wadhwa associate to lie low in the city till they were contacted. ``But before that could happen, they were in the police net'', Mahapatra said.

This has led Intelligence officers to speculate on ``a link between all militants''. Said an officer in Central Intelligence, ``Both the groups of isolated militants could be parts of a long chain. The arrest of the Amritsar militants on the basis of information in the possession of the Vadodara trio is an obvious indication of a connection.''

Moreover, both groups had been assigned their jobs by associates of Wadhwa Singh. ``In view of the Babbar Khalsa's cut-off modus operandi, there is a possibility the two groups were connected by a still-elusive agent'', an officer said.

In the wake of the arrests, the security agencies in Punjab and Vadodara have been working in tandem to determine the destination of the RDX. ``It is vitally important to find out who was the end user of the RDX'', an officer said.