At the Mediciti Hospital here today, five injured students from a Maharashtra engineering college who were at Lumbini Park on Saturday night and who survived the serial blasts that left 44 dead, were shown dossiers by the police in the hope that one of them would recognize even one of a string of pictures. These were photos believed to be of associates of 24-year-old Abdul Rehman alias Shahid Bilal — Hyderabad’s most wanted terrorist.

The same set of photos was circulated to survivors of the May 18 Mecca Masjid blast that killed nine people, barely 10 km from the latest blast sites. The Hyderabad police know that Shahid, a former resident of Moosarambagh in the Old City area of Hyderabad, an expert in improvised explosive devices, cannot be ignored in any terror investigation. That’s why as the current probe spreads far and wide, hanging over the heads of investigators is the shadow of the May 18 blast probe. For, it’s a textbook example of how investigation has been stalled as much by politics and red tape as by the new, amorphous network of domestic terror with links in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

‘Communal sensitivity’ behind CBI probe

Shoaib Jagirdar, 52, a butcher from Jalna in Maharashtra, initially considered the man who sent the RDX for bombs used in the attack, has been booked — but only under the Passport Act for the use of allegedly forged documents. Jagirdar is accused of attempting to obtain a passport for the only person officially arrested to date in connection with the blast, Sheikh Sameer alias Nayeem, 26, said to be a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, shown as first arrested on April 1 at Petrapole on the Indo-Bangla border in West Bengal by the Border Security Force.

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