Bodh Gaya:
Two days after the multiple blasts that ripped through the premises of the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya on Sunday morning, the team of Gaya district officials and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) spearheading the probe feel that the attackers may have evaded the CCTV cameras. Meanwhile, the politics over the attack heats up with top BJP leaders visiting the temple premises today and accusing the Centre of not doing enough to check terror.
Here are the latest developments:
With no leads coming from the 15 CCTV cameras that the investigators into the multiple blasts in Bodh Gaya are looking into, sources now indicate that it is possible that the attackers may have evaded those cameras.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is scheduled to visit Bodh Gaya blasts site tomorrow. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh and party leader Arun Jaitley visited the Mahabodhi temple today. The BJP, while going soft on its former ally, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, slammed the Centre for failing to check the terror attack.
A team each from the anti-terror squads of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh are among the five different teams formed by the National Investigation Agency and the Gaya district authorities to investigate the Bodh Gaya multiple blasts case.
The Delhi Police had alerted the Bodh Gaya temple authorities in October last year about a possible terror attack by the Indian Mujahideen. The investigators, however, said they are also looking at other groups besides the Indian Mujahideen.
Investigators say they need more evidence before zeroing in on any one group. A bomb analysis report has revealed startling similarities between the Bodh Gaya explosions and the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts five years ago, allegedly carried out by the Indian Mujahideen.
The investigators in Bodh Gaya are checking the hotels around the holy site and preparing a list of all those who stayed in them in the last couple of days. They have also recovered CCTV footage from these hotels.
The National Investigation Agency is also collecting telephone data from mobile towers in the area. Investigators say the analysis of the call records as well as the CCTV footage may take some time before they arrive at a credible lead into the probe.
The Bihar Police have detained a man named Vinod Mistry, whose identity card was found at the blast site. The Kolkata Police's special task force, which had also detained a man suspected of being an Indian Mujahideen operative, yesterday said he had no links with the Bodh Gaya blasts.
One of the bombs that ripped through the Bodh Gaya temple premises on early Sunday morning was placed 20 feet high on a statue of Gautam Buddha, forensic analysts said yesterday.
With less than a year to go for the general elections, Bodh Gaya is going to remain on the radar of the heated political discourse for a long time. A blame game is already on between the leading political parties.
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