In a major breakthrough, the Gujarat police have nabbed at least 10 members of the Indian Mujahideen, including mastermind Abu Basheer, allegedly involved in the recent Ahmedabad and Surat bomb blasts.
While the police are still searching for the other accused, Director General of Police PC Pande said one of them used to work as a software engineer in Wipro and is yet to be arrested.
It is alleged that Basheer and his accomplices belong to a section of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and were arrested from Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Azamgarh (Uttar Pradesh) and Lucknow.
Around 18 serial blasts had rocked Ahmedabad on July 26 and more than 20 live bombs were found in Surat a couple of days later. The blasts had killed around 56 people and injured 170.
Abu Basheer was arrested in Uttar Pradesh with the help of central agencies, Intelligence Bureau and the local police.
“We believe that further interrogation of Basheer will help solve other blast cases across the country, including in Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore,” said Pande.
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The accused had used tiffin bombs with mechanical timer devices to trigger the Ahmedabad blasts. The bombs found in Surat which did not explode due to a technical snag saw use of electronic chips.
“It is with a sense of pride that we announce that after 20 days of investigation, we have been able to nab 10 of the serial blasts accused. They belong to a section of SIMI, now known as Indian Mujahideen (IM), and had been working towards conducting some serial blasts across the country since 2005. Aged between 20-25 years, these youths were trained in Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. In January 2008, Basheer and his accomplices held training camps near Halol in Gujarat,” said Pande.