When Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the last week of August, he warned the PM of possible terror strikes in two Indian cities. One of those two cities — Delhi — was hit on Saturday.
Modi also told the PM about a possible attack on Chandigarh or Chennai, it is reliably learnt.
Modi’s information was based on the interrogation of Abu Bashar, the alleged mastermind of the Ahmedabad and Jaipur blasts, and Shahbaz, in custody of Gujarat police. The two had said that sleeper cells in Delhi would become active “soon”. However, they did not know when and where. “The investigations revealed that preparations were complete and terrorists were in a position to strike in Delhi at 30-minutes notice. We had warned the Centre of the attack,” said a senior official in the Gujarat home ministry.
Preliminary investigations by the Gujarat police also revealed that Operation BAD MAN could include attacks on cities like Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Aurangabad and Nagpur, which is the headquarters of RSS.
Modi, however, has conveyed to the Centre that Chandigarh and Chennai also could be terror targets, it is learnt. The official spokesperson from the CMO, however, refused to comment.
So far, the Gujarat police have nabbed 19 people in connection with the blasts in Jaipur and Ahmedabad as well as bomb discoveries in Surat.
Two suspects were nabbed from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. Bashar, a cleric nabbed from Azamgarh, used to teach in a ‘madrasa’ in Hyderabad. Shahbaz, who stayed in Aminabag near Lucknow, had taken over as the general secretary of banned outfit Simi after the arrest of Safdar Nagori.
Both Bashar and Shahbaz are learnt to have attended the camps organised by Simi in Kerala and Gujarat.
During Abu Bashar’s interrogation, senior officials from the central IB as well as nine states remained present. “A comprehensive report based on the information revealed by Abu Bashar was handed over to the Centre as well as the Delhi government,” said the official.
The interrogation revealed that Bashar was planning to go to Delhi along with three accomplices — Khalid, Habib Hasan and Shahalam — before he was nabbed.
“The police are currently studying Bashar’s phone records. We cannot reveal more on that,” the official said.
