INDIA:AS FUNERAL processions wound their way yesterday through India's western city of Ahmedabad the little known Indian Mujahideen group admitted responsibility for the serial bombings that ripped through the crowded city at the weekend. The group took responsibility for the bombs, which killed 49 people and injured more than 150, in e-mails sent minutes before the first blast.
The Indian Mujahideen group declared that the bombings were being perpetrated in revenge for the 2002 massacre in Gujarat state - of which Ahmedabad is the main city - of more than 2,500 people, mainly Muslims, by Hindu mobs.
It also warned several provincial governments, such as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party administrations of Gujarat and Bangalore, to stop harassing, imprisoning and torturing Muslims.
Police said they were interrogating several people, including a member of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India, in connection with the Ahmedabad attacks, but had not arrested anybody so far.
They also traced the Indian Mujahideen e-mail to a computer belonging to a US citizen living in a Bombay suburb. The computer was reportedly hacked into by the militant group.
Relatives yesterday mourned the loss of their loved ones as they struggled to cope with the tragedies. Eighteen bombs exploded across the city, and inside two crowded hospitals, within the space of an hour on Saturday evening.
The victims were killed with red-hot nuts, bolts and ball bearings that were packed into the crudely constructed bombs, designed to cause maximum casualties. They were deployed on bicycles, in garbage pits and under the seats of public buses.
"These terrorist acts are aimed at destroying our social fabric, undermining communal harmony and demoralising our people," said prime minister Manmohan Singh after visiting a bombed hospital in Ahmedabad along with federal ruling Congress Party chief, Sonia Gandhi.
"We will rise to the challenge and, I am confident, defeat these forces," Mr Singh added. He urged all political parties, the provincial and federal governments and security forces to co-operate in tracking down the culprits responsible for the well-planned bombings.
Ahmedabad's blasts came a day after eight similar bombings tore across India's southern information technology hub of Bangalore, killing two people and sparking off countrywide criticism that the attacks were due, yet again, to intelligence failure and poor policing.
Investigators, meanwhile, speculated that the bombers could have been influenced by the plot of Contract, a Bollywood film released 10 days ago. In the film, the main villain, Sultan, outlines his plan of first detonating low-intensity bombs in crowded places and once the injured converge on the nearest hospital, triggering a much bigger blast inside it.
Security was tight across airports, railway stations and religious places across the country in anticipation of further attacks. In the capital New Delhi, an additional 3,000 police were deployed to watch checkpoints and guard important buildings.
Security experts criticised the government's intelligence gathering and investigating abilities in dealing with repeated terrorist strikes. There have been 11 since the end of 2005, in which more than 550 people have died.
Ajay Sahni of the New Delhi- based Institute of Conflict Management, and an expert on terrorism in south Asia, asked rhetorically what had been done since the last blast. "In a simple word, nothing," he said.
In India, law and order is the responsibility of individual states with the federal administration only making recommendations. Thereafter, it is up to the provinces to implement them by augmenting their police forces or beefing up intelligence gathering capabilities or both.
Home ministry officials, however, concede that many state police forces are operating at a fifth below their sanctioned strength.
Besides, a third, and in some cases even more, of each state's operational police strength is deployed on VIP security duty, leaving woefully depleted numbers for intelligence gathering and preventive policing.