Investigators have found a crucial clue in Hyderabad that could link the Mumbai serial blasts on July 11 with Pakistan.

On the basis of the interrogation of Lashkar-e-Toiba’s Mohammed Ibrahim alias Khalid in a Hyderabad jail this week, the investigators found that the mix of explosives used in Mumbai was the same as the one that was being taught to jehadis in the Baluchistan.

Khalid, who was arrested on August 6 last year, was interrogated by the internal security establishment to obtain information about his camp-mates in Baluchistan.

Khalid had undergone training in subversion and sabotage along with five other Bangladeshis in militant training camps in Baluchistan in April 2005. During the interrogation, Khalid revealed that the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) taught them to make bombs using RDX and ammonium nitrate with fuel oil or diesel used to bind the core of the explosive. Khalid is linked with Rasool Parti, key accused in Haren Pandya murder case, and Shahid alias Bilal, an accused in the Hyderbad STF bombing and the IISc attack.

In the Mumbai blasts, between 50-150 grams of RDX was packed up with Ammonium Nitrate around a detonator with a timer device for maximum effect. Stabilised by the fuel oil, the explosives dry out and are ready in a couple of days. While clock timers were used in Delhi and Varanasi blasts with an alarm, investigators are yet to find evidence on the timer in the Mumbai blasts.

Although it is early days, investigators believe the Mumbai perpetrators were a close-knit professional bunch of four-to-six foreigners, possibly Bangladeshis, who carried out the carnage with very little local support. They do not rule out the possibility that the perpetrators fled the country using Nepal as a transit point.

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