Police still hopeful of cracking Church Street blast case

March 29, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 09:18 am IST - Bengaluru:

A woman was killed in the December 28, 2014 blast outside a restaurant on Church Street in Bengaluru. File photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

A woman was killed in the December 28, 2014 blast outside a restaurant on Church Street in Bengaluru. File photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

Three months after the Church Street blast and days after Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh wrote to the Chief Minister on the slow pace of investigation into the case, the city police are still hoping for a breakthrough.

“With no material evidence from the blast scene, it is a blind case where the investigation is based on theories, elimination and intelligence inputs,” a police officer said. The city police are still toying with two theories — the involvement of either the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) module that escaped from a Madhya Pradesh jail in 2013 or the Patna module of the Indian Mujahideen (IM). They are unable to eliminate either of the theories.

A woman was killed and four people were injured in the December 28, 2014 blast outside a restaurant on Church Street.

Mr. Singh’s letter also indicated that the still-at-large SIMI module had turned out to be a major national security threat. The National Investigation Agency team probing the May 1, 2014 blast on the Bengaluru–Guwahati express train in Chennai pointed fingers at the SIMI module. The last known location of the module was Hospet in Ballari district. The module has reportedly abstained from using mobile phones, making it difficult for the police to track its members down.

The Bengaluru police, who believe that the explosives used in the Patna and Bodh Gaya blasts are similar to those used in the December 28, 2014 blast here, brought two IM suspects arrested for the blasts in Patna to Bengaluru.

Their interrogation, however, did not yield any breakthrough.

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