Single outfit behind blasts: Police

As the national capital tried to come to grips with the serial blasts that rocked the city yesterday, police officials confirmed that despite anticipating such attacks, they had failed to prevent them.

At a press briefing here today, Joint Commissioner (Special Cell) of the Delhi Police Karnail Singh admitted that "the police had been alerted about such possibilities" and that "several meetings took place to prevent such a catastrophe". He said a single outfit could have been behind the serial bomb blasts.

He, however, denied that there was any specific intelligence input that supported such a view. "It was only that festival seasons are particularly conducive to such attacks," he said.

Senior home ministry officials, however, said the Delhi Police had been told to anticipate such an attack, especially after the Kashmir earthquake. "Several militant training camps had been destroyed in the quake and these organisations needed to shout out their presence and also attract renewed funding to rebuild infrastructure," said a home ministry official.

"Anyone studying the militant organisations, especially jehadi organisations knows that militants mount outrageous attacks with a high gore factor to attract funds from sympathetic donors," he added.

"The Delhi Police had been informed by the home ministry that such a thing might happen after the quake," said the official. Blasts have left 59 people dead and 210 injured.

A militant organisation, Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, has claimed responsibility for the serial blasts. According to Karnail Singh, the police are still verifying the organisation and its claim. "This is an old organisation, which surfaced in 1996 and seems to have links with the Lashkar-e-Toiba," he said.

A web portal describes the organisation as an inactive terrorist insurgent group.

The police are awaiting forensic reports from the Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Chandigarh, to verify the type of explosives used in these blasts. While there were reports that 22 people had been detained by the police for questioning so far, the Delhi Police denied any such thing.

A day after the blast the police have stepped up combing operations in the Capital and the NCR region. The police asked people to come forward for tenant verification, and asked that even cyber cafe owners, PCO owners and mobile and SIM card owners report suspicious behaviour.

"We have prevented several attacks in the past, it is unfortunate that this had to happen," said Karnail Singh.

Investigation into yesterday's blasts was proceeding in the "correct direction" and "lots of information" about those behind the attacks had been gathered, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said.

Emerging from an hour-long Cabinet meeting presided over by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said, "We have lots of information with us", when asked whether any Kashmiri militant group had claimed the responsibility for the explosions.

He said the government might consider verifying of foreign nationals more thoroughly.