Investigations into the Mumbai blasts have taken a fresh turn with arrested Lashkar-e-Toiba activist Faizal Sheikh telling the police that he was constantly in touch with his boss Azam Cheema but there were no directions to carry out the train explosions.

This revelation has brought Jaish-e-Mohammed into the spotlight and changed the course of investigations.

Faizal, in fact, told his interrogators that the train blasts could be a Jaish operation as LeT is more tuned to fidayeen attacks (like those on Red Fort and Akshardham) and not large-scale carnages. He also denied that neither the Aurangabad module or the Mumbai module had been told by Cheema at any stage to carry out 7/11.

Faizal, who the police claim is the Lashkar chief of Mumbai, admitted that he was constantly in touch with ‘‘Baba’’ or Azam Cheema, head of LeT’s India operations. Faizal was arrested along with his brother Muzammil by Mumbai’s anti-terrorist squad as a part of the larger drive to bust LeT modules. The investigating agencies have so far found no link between 7/11 and the LeT modules in Aurangabad or Mumbai or Patna. Now they are looking at a possibility of a common thread linking 7/11 and the Varanasi blasts. The Varanasi blasts were allegedly a Jaish operation—it was Abu Qadama, a Jaish divisional commander, who had claimed responsibility. One of the accused, Mohammed Waliullah, a cleric, was in touch with the Jaish militants.

Also, there is mounting evidence to suggest that even the 29/10 Delhi blasts, blamed on the LeT, have not been solved. Even though Tariq Dar was picked up on the basis of his cross-border communication with LeT’s Kashmir chief Abu Al Qama, in which he owned up the Delhi blasts, there is growing suspicion that Dar, who was an LeT spokesman and hawala operator, may have just done so to extract more money from the Lashkar commander.