Pune:
A splinter group of the Indian Mujahiddeen is emerging as the prime suspect, but investigators are also probing other angles. Sketches of two of the suspects have been reportedly made by the police. However, they won't release these to the public for now. The investigating agencies have also approached mobile companies to trace any suspicious calls made before or after the blasts in Pune on August 1.
Sushil Kumar Shinde will visit the sites affected in Wednesday's blasts and review the security situation in the city. Four low-intensity explosions took place on the busy Jangli Maharaj Road in Pune on August 1. Mr Shinde, who took charge as the home minister on the same day, was supposed to visit the city that evening, but the trip was cancelled.
The only person injured in blasts on Jangli Maharaj Road has been cleared by the police, and allowed to leave hospital. Dayanand Patil, a tailor, was interrogated on Thursday - the bag he picked up outside an auditorium blew up. His wife was also questioned. Intelligence sources say he is not a suspect.
Apart from the four bombs that exploded, two were defused. The Anti-Terror Squad in Maharashtra believes five or six people were involved in the conspiracy, and two or three people planted the bombs.
The bombs, which were triggered using wristwatches, created low-intensity explosions, because they were loosely-assembled.
Intelligence officials suspect banned terror group Indian Mujahideen (IM) played a role in the blasts. The group was headquartered in Pune.
Three of the six bombs planted on the Jangli Maharaj Road were placed in the baskets of cycles bought from a shop nearby. The police has identified the shop, questioned its owner, and used his information to create sketches of two men who bought the cycles.
The sketches will not be released to the public for now; copies have been circulated among the police and other investigators.
"We have approached mobile companies seeking the details of new numbers or suspicious numbers their towers have captured before and after the blasts. There will be lakhs of calls a tower catches in a few minutes. In this mammoth task, we have to go through all these numbers and zero in on the numbers used by suspects," said an unnamed police official to the Press Trust of India (PTI).
The bombs exploded between 7.37 and 8.15 pm on August 1 during rush hour in the heart of Pune on a road crowded with restaurants, shops and the large Sambhaji Park, popular for family outings in the evening.
Investigators have been deprived of assistance from security cameras placed at some of the locations where the blasts took place. The CCTV at a branch of Dena Bank was not working; at a McDonald's outlet where another blast took place, one camera was not working, the other filmed the interior of the restaurant and not the street outside.
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