Terror e-mail points towards home-grown terrorists

INDIAN TERRORISTS? The e-mail may have been sent to ensure a deniability of any cross-border involvement.

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New Delhi: A group calling itself Indian Mujahideen sent video clips in an e-mail on Wednesday night to the media, claiming responsibility for the blasts which left 64 dead.

Indian Mujahideen — the same group which had taken responsibility for the blasts in Uttar Pradesh courts in November last year — has claimed credit for the Jaipur blasts in an email sent from a cyber cafe in Ghaziabad.

Intelligence sources say that the e-mail has been sent to point the needle of suspicion towards home grown terrorists and ensure a deniability of any cross-border involvement.

Rajasthan Chief Minister, Vasundhara Raje raised some doubts at a press conference saying, "A bag was kept at the back of the cycle. And the way the bomb exploded, the whole of the seat remained intact. Now, was this just a ploy to trick us into believing that the bomb was kept at the back of the cycle?"

The owner of the cyber cafe has been detained by the police to obtain a description of the person who sent the e-mail to various television channels late on Wednesday night.

Analysts believe that the language used in the e-mail is quite similar to that found in pamphlets of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Investigators are also on the lookout for nine men who placed nine bicycles loaded with bombs in Jaipur — eight of which exploded and one diffused.

Sketches of three more suspects were released on Thursday evening, while a woman is also being interrogated in Jaipur along with few other men, mostly of Bangladeshi origin.

All the bombs were wrapped in a local newspaper, but beyond that the investigators are still groping in the dark.