The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) said on Wednesday that US national Kenneth Haywood, to whose Navi Mumbai apartment the Ahmedabad terror email was traced, and nine other men were being subjected to lie-detector and brain-mapping tests in the hope of achieving a breakthrough in the serial blasts case.

The tests are being conducted at Mumbai’s Kalina Forensic Sciences Lab since Tuesday and the suspects include Haywood’s neighbours and technicians from Tata Indicom who had access to his WiFi Internet connection, ATS officials said.

They also said that an interim cyber forensics report from the Kalina lab indicated that while Haywood’s computers were not used to send the e-mail which talked of the Ahmedabad serial blasts five minutes before the bombs went off, his WiFi network might have been used as suspected.

“We are subjecting 10 people to polygraph and brain-mapping tests... the tests have been on since yesterday and Haywood was subjected to the two tests today. All the tests are to collect more information on the usage of the Internet,” said ATS Additional Commissioner of Police Parambir Singh. “All those subjected to the tests are males from Navi Mumbai and include residents of Gunina Apartments,” Singh added, referring to the upmarket residential complex in Sanpada where Haywood lives.

ATS sources said that investigators were initially looking at a concept called ‘war driving’ in which people fish and search for unsecured WiFi networks. However, experts now suspect that not only was Haywood’s WiFi connection misused but the users also seemed to know the security features involved.

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