Probing the extensive use of mobile phones in the run-up to the July 26 Ahmedabad serial blasts, the police in Gujarat have discovered that while most phones on their watch list dropped dead on the night of the blasts, one remained in use in New Delhi at least until August 5. The mobile phone was traced to the Nizamuddin area before it stopped functioning. Gujarat police suspect it was being used by someone who still figures in their list of most wanted.

Sources said that the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) of Ahmedabad Police have established that a mobile phone believed to have been used for the planning of the Ahmedabad blasts was also being used in Delhi until about a month before the serial blasts there.

While the DCB has so far arrested 21 alleged SIMI activists in connection with the Ahmedabad blasts, several others remain at large — among them are Abdus Subhan Qureshi alias Tauqeer, Qayamuddin Kapadia, Abdul Razaq Mansuri alias Mohammed Ismail, Mujib Shaikh and Alamzeb Afridi.

Police investigations and the interrogation of those arrested suggest that local SIM cards were purchased under fake names and used only until July 26, presumably to avoid being tracked. “These people had bought SIM cards providing fake identities around the first week of July. These SIM cards were bought from different places in Ahmedabad using forged documents. They were supposed to get rid of the SIM cards and the cheap mobile sets on the night of July 26 itself,” an investigating officer told The Indian Express.

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