Militants bought 5 pressure cookers for Varanasi serial blasts

Varanasi, Mar 9 (UNI) As many as five pressure cookers -- two still untraced -- were bought by the suspected terrorists to be used in the preparation of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Varanasi bomb blasts.

The fact came to light during sustained investigation in the case when the police managed to track down the shop in the wholesale market in Harhasarai from where the pressure cookers were procured.

''The shopkeeper is being interrogated in this regard,'' highly placed police sources said.

The preliminary inquiry revealed that two persons had bought five pressure cookers from a shop in Harhasarai.

Two pressure cookers were used in the explosion. While one pressure cooker bomb was defused, the police were still to track down the other two cookers.

The police also released photo identity kit of two persons for suspected involvement in the Varanasi serial blasts, which claimed 17 lives on Tuesday evening.

DIG (Varanasi range) R N Yadav told UNI here that the computer generated sketches of the duo were based on the statements of shopkeepers of Godolia area where a live bomb was defused, minutes after the first bomb ripped through the famous Sankatmochan temple.

''The sketches would be provided to all police stations and pasted at public places,'' he informed.

Police and the Special Task Force (STF) also conducted raids on atleast two places where the suspect terrorists had stayed -- one in Dashashmedh area and other in Musafirkhana in Dalmandi area.

In fact, there is a strong possibility that the two suspected terrorists had stayed in a rented accomodation, which subsequently was traced and raided by cops. Refusing to confirm the information, the police maintained that interrogations were still on.

Meanwhile, the three-tier security in-and-around Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanwapi complex had been tightened. With six companies of PAC and four companies of CRP already in place, an additional five CRP companies had reached the holy city, official sources told UNI.

ASP Jugal Kishore Tiwari, the in charge of Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanwapi complex, said daily emergency security rehearsal was being done in the complex even as earlier the exercise was done once a fortnight.

On the other hand, police sources in Lucknow said efforts were on to establish links of the blasts with the claim made by a hitherto unknown militant outfit, Lashkar-e-Kahar, which today claimed the responsibility of the twin blasts in the temple town.

Current News Service (CNS), a local news agency in Srinagar, had received a call from a person who identified himself as Abdul Jabbar, the spokesman of the outfit, this morning.

The caller threatened more such attacks.

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