Probing the blast at the Ajmer Sharif dargah, the Rajasthan police have sent teams to Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh after recovering newspapers from a blue-coloured bag in which a live bomb was found on Friday, the morning after the explosion. These newspapers, dated May 10 and 12, were published from Ahmedabad and Udaipur.

“One is a Hindi newspaper while the other is in Gujarati. The police also recovered cuttings of a Telugu newspaper from the spot where the blast took place. Teams have been sent to all these places,” an official said.

The police have also turned the spotlight on a Madhya Pradesh arms dealer who worked with one Nafis Chishti, arrested under the Arms Act near the Ajmer Sharif dargah a few months ago. Nafis is currently lodged in Ajmer jail.

Bangladeshis interrogated by the Rajasthan police after the blast also appeared to have an MP connection and that was being looked into. Rajasthan Addl DGP (Crime) A K Jain said: “All angles and leads we are getting are being worked on.”

In Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh DGP A R Puar confirmed to The Indian Express that a Rajasthan police team had arrived in the state to collect information from Ujjain and Ratlam towns. The police had apparently found explosives wrapped in two evening newspapers published from Ujjain and Indore. Puar said the Rajasthan team told him that newspapers from Ahmedabad and Uttar Pradesh were also found from the spot.

Ujjain SP Jaideep Prasad said a Rajasthan inspector spent a day in the town to explore possible links. Ujjain is one of the strongholds of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India. The team did not make any arrest from Ujjain. Another team was in Ratlam.

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