Hunt on for IM ground help
Probing the Indian Mujahideen-Lashkar link to the Hyderabad blasts, Central agencies are now looking for the crucial missing links who helped the IM module busted by the Delhi police in October 2012 reconnoitre Dilsukhnagar and two other locations in Hyderabad last year.
The agencies are on the look-out for an IM operative code-named Raju Bhai, who might be a key link to the Hyderabad blast investigation. Raju is learnt to have provided logistical support to Sayed Maqbool, Imran and their associates to carry out a recce in Hyderabad in July 2012 on the instructions of top IM leader Riyaz Bhatkal. Investigators believe Raju is a Pakistani national operating in India and has been specifically tasked with liaising between the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and the homegrown terrorist outfit.
IM operatives Maqbool and Imran, arrested for their role in the serial blasts in Pune in August 2012, had told the Delhi police during interrogation about their outfit’s plans to target Dilsukhnagar, Begum Bazar and Abids in Hyderabad. Four months on, after Dilsukhnagar witnessed twin blasts, the arrested IM operatives are being interrogated again in Tihar jail, sources said.
While the security agencies appear to have missed the IM plot to target Hyderabad last year, a “blame-game” appeared to have begun with the home ministry on Thursday claiming it had alerted all state governments on February 16, 19 and 20 about possible terror strikes. MHA officials said five cities, including Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Coimbatore and Hubli, had been asked to step up vigil after an IB alert about possible retaliatory action by Pakistan-based terror groups to avenge the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru.
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