Blasts: Hazy CCTV footage, dead drop technique confuse cops

, Feb 25:

police and central probing agencies have said that the footage captured by the CCTV cameras installed at Dilsukhnagar where a couple of bomb blasts killed 16 lives besides injuring several on February 21, was not clear and did not give any definitive clue on the identity of the suspects. This would clearly prove to be a setback for the probe into the blasts.

External help required to reconstruct hazy video footage

Intelligence sources said the technology required to make blurred footage sharper might not be available here and in that case, the authorities would have to turn to foreign agencies like the FBI to reconstruct hazy video images. The US investigative agency had helped India by rebuilding images of the suspected bomber in the wake of the German Bakery blast in Pune in February 2010.

Meanwhile, the probe into the latest blasts spread to states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, UP, Bihar and Jharkhand and was focusing on interrogating jailed cadres of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and other terror suspects having links to the Andhra Pradesh capital. Suspects arrested in connection to the Pune blast of August last year revealed that Dilsukhnagar had been recced last June. The investigators were hoping to extract more leads on the suspect terror module from the arrested.

Dead drop technique makes it more difficult

According to one news report, the task to find out the real hands behind the latest blasts has been made all the more difficult by the total absence of technical trail of terror communications before the blasts. Outfits like the IM and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) do not depend on sophisticated means of communication and use the foolproof 'dead drop technique' to convey terror messages.

The technique involves using an email account to draft an email containing the coded message for the planned terror mission. The draft is stored by a terror handler and the password of the email account is shared with the intended recipient to help him see the draft from the same account. The email is subsequently deleted and since it was never sent, no technical trail is left for the investigators to follow.

Such a mechanism was thought out after assessing the risks of the conventional modes of communication like telephone calls, SMS or emails, which could make it easier for the sleuths to get leads on the case.

Senior officials probing the Hyderabad blasts case said that the IM's hands were more than apparent from the make of the explosives and use of cycles in orchestrating the mission, besides the information on the alleged recce by suspected IM members.

OneIndia News