Bengal CID and Hyderabad police working on mosque blast

Kolkata, May 21 (UNI) As sleuths tumbled on a Bengal link to Friday's blast in the Mecca Masjid in the Hyderabad, CID officials were probing in tandem with a police team from the Southern city how a mobile SIM card, believed to have been used to trigger the explosion, could find its way from the state.

The SIM card was activated in the industrial town of Asansol and tracking down its history, police raided a mobile connection centre.

They later stated to have picked up for interrogation two persons from Dumka and Mihijam in the adjoining Jharkhand.

CID Deputy Inspector General of Police (Operations) Rajeev Kumar, however, said, ''We are conducting our probe. We have not arrested or detained anyone in this connection so far.'' Altogether eleven people were killed and many injured in the blast that took place immediately after the Friday prayer in the crowded mosque.

Police said the SIM card of the mobile, used to trigger the blast on Friday, was bought in Rupnarayanpur on the Bengal-Jharkhand border in the name of Mohammad Shahid alias Bilal, an alleged activist of Harkat-ul-Jihad Al Islami(HUJI), an Islamic fundamentalist organisation.

''The CID is assisting the Hyderabad police. We cannot say anything more but different agencies are working on the probe,'' Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia said.

Police in Hyderabad believe that the Bangladesh-based HUJI was behind the blast and its activist Bilal, a resident of Hyderabad, had designed the plot. A phone call from Bangladesh was believed to have detonated the Improvised Explosive Device(IED), stuffed with RDX and TNT in the mosque.

The Bengal link to the blast gained ground after reports said that Bilal had arrived in Kolkata last month from Gujarat.

Sleuths also reportedly found close ties between Mumbai train blast mastermind Sheikh Sameer, a Lashker-e-Toiba member, and Bilal who was believed to be now in hiding in Pakistan.

UNI