INDIAN INVESTIGATORS are examining “every possible hostile group” in connection with the triple bombing in Mumbai that killed 18 people and wounded 131 others, the federal home minister said yesterday.
“There was no intelligence regarding a militant attack in Mumbai. That is not a failure of the intelligence agencies,” Palaniappan Chidambaram told a news conference in Mumbai following Wednesday’s bombings, which left 23 people critically injured.
“We know that the perpetrators have attacked and have worked in a very, very clandestine manner. Maybe it’s a very small group, maybe they did not communicate with each other,” he said, adding that India was not blaming anyone in particular at this stage.
Neighbour Pakistan has been blamed for almost all the earlier terrorist strikes in Mumbai and across India over the past two decades.
No one has yet admitted responsibility for detonating the improvised explosive devices packed with ammonium nitrate that ripped through three crowded Mumbai commercial and residential neighbourhoods within 15 minutes of each other during the busy evening rush hour.
The bomb in south Mumbai’s Dadar area was secreted in a bus shelter in the Opera House business district, teeming with diamond merchants and automobile spare part dealers, a few miles away and then hidden on a motorcycle in the adjoining jam-packed Zaveri or jewellery bazaar.
This was Zaveri bazaar’s third bombing; the earlier ones occurred in 1993 and in 2006.
The powerful explosion ripped off storefronts, shattered glass windows and shook the foundation of buildings in surroundings neighbourhoods.
Mr Chidambaram speculated that the bombings could have been in retaliation for a series of recent arrests earlier this week of members of the indigenous Indian Mujahideen militant group, which reportedly has links with the Pakistan-based Islamist Lashkar-i- Taeba (LiT or Army of the Pure).
India however is wary of even hinting at any Pakistan-based groups’ involvement in the wake of bilateral peace talks, resumed following a three-year hiatus after the November 2008 terror strike on Mumbai.
It would also impinge on the meeting that Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers are scheduled to hold in Delhi later this month to take the peace initiative forward.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is also due in India for diplomatic, political and strategic discussions next week. Any suggestion attributing blame for the Mumbai bombings to Pakistan-based groups could further complicate that country’s fraught ties with Washington.
The continuing monsoon downpour has threatened to wash away critical forensic evidence at the bomb sites and teams of experts have hastened to gather material as police cordoned off the areas.
Security agencies and police have come in for severe criticism.
Angry Mumbai residents, incensed over recurring terror strikes on their city every three years since 2003, said that the state security apparatus was inadequate and wholly unprepared to neutralise or counter them.