While at least two emails confront the Ministry of Home Affairs claiming responsibility for the high-intensity Delhi High Court blast that killed 13 and injured over 70, three suspects were arrested on Thursday from Kashmir.
Home Minister P Chidambaram has sought the help of search giant Google to track the mails. Three persons were arrested for complicity in at least one email.
Yesterday, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) had sent an email claiming ‘credit’ for the blast. The email was traced to a cyber café in Kishtwar in Kashmir. However, on Thursday investigators were surprised to receive another email allegedly from the banned terrorist organisation Indian Mujahideen.
“HuJI was not responsible for the blast, it was carried out by Indian Mujahideen. We had made plans to target Delhi High Court for long and we decided to do it on Wednesday because it was the busiest day at the Delhi High Court. We will again carry out an attack on Tuesday outside a shopping complex. Stop it if you can!” said an email allegedly sent by Chotu, who claims to be a IM member.
“We are taking this second email very seriously and investigations are on,” said U K Bansal, secretary (internal security).
Meanwhile, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is spearheading the blast probe, announced a reward of Rs 5,00,000 for providing information on the terrorists involved in the blast. He suggested the investigations were not proceeding as the government had hoped. NIA chief S C Sinha met Delhi Police Commissioner B K Gupta and members of the special cell (anti-terrorist unit) to discuss the ongoing probe.
Apart from tracking the activities of known HuJI and Indian Mujahideen men, intelligence agencies are also tracking members of the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), Khalistan Commando Force (KCF) and Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) suspecting their involvement in the blast.
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“Although we suspect a couple of terror groups to have masterminded the blast, there are credible inputs suggesting involvement of some elements of others as well which had become dormant,” said a home ministry official.
Security agencies detained three men, Mehmood Khwaja, a cyber café owner in Kishtwar in Jammu & Kashmir and during the course of investigations it was found that the first email sent by members of HuJI was sent from his cyber café. Investigators have also detained Khalid, an associate of Khwaja.
“After detailed questioning of the three accused we have detained in connection to the email, we have identified the person who had sent it to media organisations after the blast. The email was sent after 1 pm and we don’t think that the person who wrote the email was involved in the bomb attack,” said a senior home ministry official.
Senior officials of the ministry said a man from Patna, who was earlier arrested for using a stolen ATM card, was being questioned by the NIA.
The officials said NIA would also probe the low-intensity blast outside Delhi High Court on May 25 to find out if the same group was involved in the attack.