Condemning the serial blasts in the city, a group of prominent persons termed the bombings a "well orchestrated heinous conspiracy" to derail resumption of dialogue and peace process between India and Pakistan that was stalled following the terrorist attack in Mumbai in 2008.
"With the resumption of dialogue in the last six months both the countries had made significant progress towards normalisation of relations and resolution of a number of outstanding issues through a series of high-level meetings and exchange programmes.
"The all important meeting of the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan is scheduled at the end of this month to address a number of crucial issues and the blasts seem to be engineered to disrupt this meeting and derail the peace process once again.
"It must be remembered that the terror attack in Mumbai in November 2008 was also carried out about two weeks before the scheduled meeting of the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan in mid December 2008," the group said in a statement.
"The forces of evil which had engineered the blasts in 2008, succeeded in the cancellation of the meeting of the foreign secretaries in December 2008 and the disruption of the peace process for over two years. We should not allow the nefarious designs of the terrorists, of any kind, to succeed once again," they said.
The signatories, who include Admiral Ramdas, filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and academic Amitabh Mattoo, have said that agencies of all countries, especially India and Pakistan should cooperate fully in thorough investigation of all terror attacks, journalist Jatin Desai, part of the group, said.
