The Hindu : Front Page : Ludhiana cinema blast: long investigation could lie ahead

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Tuesday, Oct 16, 2007
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Ludhiana cinema blast: long investigation could lie ahead

Praveen Swami

As forensic evidence trickles in, the list of possible suspects multiplies

Terror groups have long history of collaboration with Pakistan-based Khalistani organisations
BKI desperate to register success

NEW DELHI: Even as the first fragments of forensic evidence of the Shringar Cinema bombing in Ludhiana have begun to trickle in, Punjab police investigators find themselves with a mounting list of suspects — and, as yet, little hard evidence to work with.

National Security Guard experts have determined that the bomb which ripped through the theatre was built around a core of Research Department Explosive, but officials said its final composition and construction would be known only after final results were available.

Punjab police sources said they were focussing on the possible role of the Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) — the last Khalistan terror group believed to have credible offensive capabilities. Officials note that the globally-proscribed BKI, which frequently targeted migrant workers from Bihar during the past, has been desperate to register success.

“Ever since the Inter-Services Intelligence started to choke off funding to the BKI in 2005, its Lahore-based chief Wadhawa Singh has been seeking to mount a major operation to raise funds from sympathisers in Europe and the United States of America,” a New Delhi-based intelligence official told The Hindu.

Only last month did the Punjab police seize 3.5 kg of RDX from a car owned by Jagraon resident Gurpreet Singh, son of a former terrorist. Investigators say Gurpreet Singh, who is absconding, met Wadhawa Singh earlier this year, after travelling to Lahore through Kuala Lumpur.

Last year too, the Punjab police found evidence that the BKI was seeking to mount offensive operations.

Four BKI terrorists, linked to a module controlled by the absconding Beant Singh assassin Jagtar Singh Tara, were arrested on March 21, 2006, and one kg of RDX was recovered. Just a day earlier, the Delhi police held the BKI operations chief Paramjit Singh Bheora and associates. Four kg of RDX was found in the terrorists’ safe-house near Karnal.

BKI operative held

In 2005, the Delhi police arrested top BKI operative Jagtar Singh Hawara after his organisation bombed two movie theatres in New Delhi to protest what they claimed was its anti-Sikh politics.

Hawara, architect of the 1995 assassination of Chief Minister Beant Singh, escaped from Chandigarh’s Burail Jail in 2004.

He was sentenced to death earlier this year.

But intelligence officials also said the evidence available so far did not justify making a determination on which terror group most likely carried out Sunday’s strike. Islamist terror groups have hit targets in Punjab before — a fact of significance given the spate of recent attacks nationwide.

Among the largest terror strikes conducted by the Islamist terror groups in Punjab was the March 1997 bombing of a parking lot outside the Jalandhar City Railway Station.

Six people were killed and 13 injured. An ammonium nitrate-based bomb packed in a still can was used to fabricate the device used in the explosion.

New Delhi resident Amir Hashim, a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, who operated under the code-name Kamran, was later convicted for his role in the bombing, as well as a series of prior strikes in Punjab, Haryana and the national capital. Pakistani national Wasim Akbar, who collaborated with Hashim in the Jalandhar bombing and the abortive December 1996 strike at Ludhiana, was shot dead at Surankote, near Poonch in 1998.

All three top Lashkar operatives who directed Hashim — the organisation’s overall military commander, Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi; the head of operations outside Jammu and Kashmir, Mohammad Azam Cheema; and his immediate superior, one-time Ghaziabad resident Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’ — are still active in Pakistan.

The Islamist terror groups have a long history of collaboration with Pakistan-based Khalistani organisations such as the BKI and the Khalistan Zindabad Force.

In 1992, as the Khalistan movement began to disintegrate, the Central Bureau of Investigation detected efforts to revive it with assistance from Islamists in Jammu and Kashmir. BKI operative Manjit Singh, the leading figure in the operation, was recently released from prison after he served a life term.

Role of migrant workers?

Ludhiana’s large community of Bangladeshi migrant workers, some intelligence officials suspect, may also have been used by Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami operatives to execute the movie theatre bombing.

Investigators believe that Bangladesh-based HUJI operatives executed at least three recent strikes: the Mecca Masjid bombing in May, the Hyderabad serial bombings in August, and last week’s shrine attack in Ajmer.

“At this stage,” one official said, “we need to explore every possible avenue.”

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