The Probe into the Mumbai train blasts is running into one wall after another. Investigating agencies have now virtually concluded that the only remaining unidentified body is that of a victim and not that of a bomber involved in the train carnage.

Although the identity of the body has still not been established, doctors who reconstructed the face are of the opinion that the body is of a victim rather than a jihadi bomber. They pointed out that the teeth were stained and chipped due to years of consumption of tobacco and pan masala, a profile they felt fitted someone from a tobacco-chewing North Indian region. It is possibly a man, they suggested, who had come to Mumbai from elsewhere, whose family may not yet know of his death.

That the unclaimed body could be of a victim also flies in the face of the alleged confession made by arrested Al Badr commander Taufooq Akmal Hashemi that 17 Lashkar militants carried out the Mumbai blast. He is reported to have told the army that 16 of the bombers returned to safety while one was killed in the explosion.

With the police finding no evidence to substantiate their initial claim of the blasts’ links with Lashkar modules in Mumbai and Aurangabad, investigators are veering towards the hypothesis that there was no local involvement in the carnage and that Masood Azhar’s Jaish-e-Mohammed is behind the crime.

Security agencies are revisiting the interrogation reports of the Ayodhya attack and Varanasi serial blasts as there is distinct similarity of the blasts with 7/11. For instance, JeM militant Rashid, who is key to the Mumbai blasts, figures in the Ayodhya attack as a liaison.

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