UP investigators grope in dark to nail cycle blast accused

Lucknow, Nov 26 (UNI) Three days after six serial blasts rocked Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi court premises, Uttar Pradesh police is yet to get any clinching evidence on the modus operandi of the terrorists.

A total of 13 people were killed and more than 70 wounded in the serial and coordinated blasts at court premises in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad districts.

In a bid to nail the possible culprits, the city police late last night took into custody one Faizi Ahmed, owner of Faizi Travels, a tour operating agency, for interrogation.

Faizi is the elder brother of suspected Harkat-ul-Jehad Islami (HuJI) member Mohammad Tufail, whom the police suspect has a hand in the serial blasts that rocked three cities on Friday.

The investigating team had sealed a computer among several other documents found from the agency situated in Aminabad locality.

''We are in the process of scanning the computer and documents found during the raid,'' a senior district police official said.

According to police, Tufail's name also figured in the Mumbai and Delhi serial blasts of 1993 and 2005 respectively and the CBI had also announced a cash reward on him.

The raided travel agency was on the suspect list during a recent terrorist act in Sitapur when a high-powered explosive exploded during transportation.

Meanwhile, police were interrogating nine people taken into custody from Azamgarh yesterday, in connection with an abandoned car, which was stolen from here.

A senior police official maintained here today that there was still no major breakthrough in the investigation so far.

''The sleuths are working on all aspects of the probe, including the movement of terrorists involved in the blasts and tracking their mobile phone numbers through surveillance,'' Additional Director General of Police (STF and Crime/Law and Order) Brij Lal informed.

The ADG stopped short of divulging the name of the terrorist outfit behind the serial blasts.

According to the preliminary report, the live bomb recovered from Lucknow court premises was said to be RDX or C-4, while the rest of the explosives used were ammonium nitrate.

On the basis of preliminary investigations, the probe team has come to a conclusion that the suspected terrorists might have possibly come from Eastern UP areas near Allahabad.

STF sources said there was a wide possibility that the group might have taken shelter in and around Allahabad to execute their plan. ''You can easily travel from Allahabad to all these three cities within a fixed time period. They might have given a final shape to the manufactured bombs at one place and then transported the same to the selected blast sites within a fixed time,'' the sources maintained.

The investigators maintain that terrorists had used at least seven people to execute its plan for the blasts. ''Besides the man who wrote the e-mail from the Delhi-based cyber cafe, at least six people were pressed into service to get the six bicycles laden with bombs transported to the blast sites,'' a STF source said.

UNI