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.

For the record, the blast probe involves two separate cases: one linked to the bomb that exploded on the afternoon of May 18 while Friday prayers were on at the mosque and the second involving the bomb that was defused soon after.

The Andhra Pradesh government handed over investigation in the case of the exploded bomb — Crime Number 100/2007 registered with the Hussaini Alam police — to the CBI which re-registered the case on June 9.

However, a Special Investigation Team of the Hyderabad police remains involved in the probe, especially at the local level, through the case of the unexploded bomb.

Also running parallel is a magisterial inquiry ordered by the state government into the police firing on an angry crowd emerging from the mosque following the bomb blast that left five people dead.

A senior police official who did not wish to be named said that the state asked the CBI to investigate the blast case because of the “communal sensitivity involved” and an impression among the minority community of local police bias. In fact, just days before the blasts, senior officers of the Hyderabad Police’s anti-terrorist squad were publicly criticized by the leaders of the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, the dominant political party in the Old City — an ally of the ruling Congress in AP and the UPA government at the Centre — for their hardline approach in tackling terrorism.

Following the blasts, MIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi even warned the government against ATS chief Rajiv Trivedi investigating the case.

The ATS chief subsequently opted out of the Special Investigation Team for the blast probe citing criticism by Owaisi and has now been transferred out of ATS.

The Malegaon parallel

Since the CBI stepped in, different sets of its investigators have been in and out of Hyderabad chasing different aspects of the case. Others have travelled to West Bengal, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and UP for leads.

“It’s much easier for a central agency like the CBI to conduct a dedicated probe that extends nationwide,” says Harish Kumar Gupta, Hyderabad Joint Commissioner of Police and head of the local special investigation team.

Investigators believe that a group of militants linked to Bangladesh and Pakistan, with the Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Toiba as prime suspects, carried out the attack with local support.

The motive for the attack, though still a matter of broad conjecture aligned to terrorist objectives in India, is believed to be an attempt to create communal trouble in a city where a large number of Muslims live in peace with the majority Hindus. In terms of linkages to other terror attacks in the country the Mecca Masjid blast bears close resemblance to the September 8, 2006 blasts in the communally sensitive town of Malegaon in Maharashtra, in the nature of the bombs used and the modus operandi involved.

Both attacks occurred on a Friday, around prayer time at mosques, and involved bombs with RDX as the key explosive material. While the Hyderabad bombs contained a mix of RDX and TNT, classified as explosives used primarily by the military and terrorists, the Malegaon explosive mix contained ammonium nitrate besides RDX.

A team of technical experts from the National Security Guard’s Bomb Data Centre, after a visit to Hyderabad on May 20, cited the close resemblance between the Malegaon and Mecca Masjid attacks especially in the shrapnel. “The metal pieces used as shrapnel are exactly the same. These seem to be from a common source. It is very much like Malegaon. The black metal boxes used to pack the bomb are also similar,” said a member of the NSG team.

Experts at the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Lab have now seconded the opinion in a recent report given to the CBI on the exploded and unexploded bombs in Hyderabad.

“They sent us a sample of the explosives from Malegaon. We gave a report that it contains RDX. The explosive mix used here was RDX and TNT,” director of the APFSL O Narasimhamurthy said.

Investigators are fairly sure, given the discovery of a local dialect newspaper dated May 4, 2007, in the packing of the unexploded bomb that the bombs were locally assembled in the two weeks preceding the attack.

The chargesheet in the Malegaon blasts case, where 40 people were killed and 312 injured, incidentally states that nine SIMI activists executed the attack with the help of two Pakistanis to “infuriate the entire Muslim community and trigger communal riots”.

The unexploded bomb as clue

In terms of lines of investigation, the finely grooved iron pipes used in the unexploded bomb in Hyderabad, described as being rare by NSG officials, has become an important piece of evidence for investigation in the Mecca Masjid probe, with CBI investigators scouring foundries for a possible link to the makers of the metal pipes.

CBI investigators are also trying to trace the roots of a “woman’s bag” with a ‘Made in Sri Lanka’ label used to hold one of the bombs and a man’s shirt found in one of the bags with the brand name ‘Potatoes’.

While the Hyderabad SIT, soon after the blasts, with the help of the West Bengal and Jharkhand police, tracked down the origin of one of the SIM cards used in the two Nokia 6030 mobile phones used as the timer, the leads only hit a dead end.

It was discovered that one of the SIM cards, bought in June 2006, from the mobile phone store of one Mohammed Sajjid in Jharkhand’s Jamtara district, was purchased by using the fake identity of Babulal Yadav, a resident of Rupnarayanpur in Jantara district.

On July 26, the CBI, with findings from the course of its probe, released a sketch and photograph of the two people believed to have obtained the SIM cards.

The sketch described a bespectacled man, aged 30-35 years, medium built, fair complexion, and a height of 5 feet 2 inches. The photograph described a medium-built person, of “wheat complexion,” 5 feet 6 inches in height, 25 - 30 years old.

Soon after the lookout was issued, the CBI was confronted by a man called Tarak Nath Pramanik, a yoga teacher in the Noida College of Physical Education, claiming that his photo had been wrongly released and that he had no link to the Mecca Masjid blast.

On July 30, a red-faced CBI admitted that “the photograph of Shri Tarak Nath Pramanik has been used under different names for purchase of numerous SIM cards, suspected to be used by the perpetrators of this crime...His photograph has also been used by the suspects for obtaining a driving license and Election Identity Card,” the CBI said.

Back to Babu Bhai

One of the key lines of investigation in the Hyderabad blast probe continues to be an exploration of the possible role of Shahid Bilal with known links to the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the HuJI and the LeT.

Shahid, based in Bangladesh and then Pakistan, played a central role in an October 2005 blast in Hyderabad and is known to have the expertise and reach in the City to carry out a bomb attack like that of May 18.

Though sources in the investigating agencies indicated that the Hyderabad SIT made a failed attempt to infiltrate Shahid Bilal’s network by sending a former associate and a murder accused, Abdul Sattar, 27, the SIT has strongly denied this. Sattar was reportedly caught by the border police and sent back to Hyderabad. He was shown as arrested by the local police on June 15.

“No investigating agency will take a risk like that. It is only speculation,” the Hyderabad SIT head said.

Senior police officials in Hyderabad also termed as “untrue” reports of the detention in mid-July of a man called Abdul Karim Quadri for sheltering, through April, two Pakistani and one Bangladeshi national at his home in the City. New hope for the probe has come from the arrest of a key HuJI representative Jalaluddin in Lucknow in late June by the UP police. Jalaluddin alias Babu Bhai, a native of West Bengal is being called a key HuJI operative in India. According to his interrogation statement, first reported in The Indian Express yesterday, he admitted that he transported RDX to Hyderabad.

(Tomorrow: Samjhauta Express, another probe gone off track)