Police chief says scanned area 400 times since Nov 15 alert

Contrary to initial reports, CCTV footage could give clues in the Hyderabad attacks, police said Saturday, adding that a camera at a traffic junction not far from the blast sites had recorded both the explosions. "We have a lot of CCTV footage, including that of the blasts," Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anurag Sharma said.

With the Andhra Pradesh police being accused of "failure" to secure Dilsukhnagar despite alerts, Sharma said that six vulnerable spots in Hyderabad had been scanned by special squads and sniffer dog teams more than 400 times since November 15.

"After Delhi Police arrested members of an Indian Mujahideen module, our intelligence officials went to Delhi and questioned them. It emerged that Dilsukhnagar, Raniganj, Begum Bazar, Abids, Lal Darwaja and Tank Bund were recceed as possible targets. Since November 15, all these areas were checked and re-checked. Though we spared no effort, the terrorists have to succeed only once," the police commissioner said.

Sources, however, said that while footage had been retrieved from a traffic camera near the Konark theatre, where the more deadly of the twin blasts went off, the images only revealed the form of a possible suspect. There is a hazy image of the front and back of a possible suspect, but it is nothing that will take the investigations forward, some Andhra Pradesh police officials confessed to their counterparts from another state.

Police also clarified that they were talking to one of the injured, Abdul Wasif Mirza, at length as he had earlier survived the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast, and stressed he was not a suspect. "What he said about his presence in Dilsukh-nagar was checked out," Inspector Narasimha Rao said.

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