The Delhi Police, probing the serial blasts in the city earlier this month, today said they had arrested three more suspected members of the Indian Mujahideen and claimed that the terror module was planning at least 20 more blasts in the Capital, particularly targeting the commercial hub of Nehru Place. The three youths, police said, were suspected to have played roles in both the Delhi and Ahmedabad blasts.

The 13-member module, whose two activists were killed and five arrested, was also involved in blasts in Gorakhpur and Varanasi in the last two years, police said.

The three suspects, Zia-ur-Rehman (22), Mohammed Shakeel (24) and Saqib Nisar (23), were arrested from a rented accommodation — it had been rented by Saqib who, according to his brother Shakir, had taken the Civil Services examination in 2006 “because he wanted to root out corruption” — in Jamia Nagar. They were later remanded to police custody for 14 days.

Police officials said the three suspects had told them that Atif Ameen, killed in a shootout on Friday, was planning more blasts in the capital. “After the GK-I blasts, we formed ten different teams to track down suspects. We got a tip-off late Saturday and arrested them from the Jamia Nagar area,” DCP (South) H G S Dhaliwal told reporters.

While Zia is a BA final year student at Jamia, Shakeel is a MA (Economics) final year student. Nisar is a final year MBA correspondence course student of the Sikkim Manipal University.

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