Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said here on Wednesday that the probe into the Patna serial blasts was handed over to National Investigation Agency (NIA) following a recommendation from the Bihar government.
Mr. Shinde earlier met Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar at his North Block office and during the 30-minute meeting the Chief Minister briefed him about the law and order situation in the State and the developments in the investigations. He also requested that the probe into the serial explosions be transferred to the NIA.
“We have discussed the issue. We have to strengthen our anti-terror capabilities as Bihar has not witnessed any such major incident in the past. But we need the Centre’s assistance. We need force and equipment. We have also decided to set up an anti-terror cell,” said Mr. Kumar.
Reiterating that the State Government had no specific intelligence input on the blasts, he said the Bihar Police have already arrested one person through whom they had gathered several vital clues.
Mr. Kumar said since the Bihar Police did not have the database on terror suspects, the State Government had decided to hand over the case to NIA. The Bihar Police will assist the central agency in the probe.
While the NIA is yet to take over the probe formally, police investigations have so far indicated that some members of the suspected Indian Mujahideen module that carried out the explosions on Sunday had first conducted reconnaissance of Gandhi Maidan and other places in Patna in April with an intention to carry out terror strikes. The second round of reconnaissance was done on October 8, 9 and 10 to identify the potential targets.
While three of the suspects have been arrested in the case so far, several teams have been mounting raids to track down the other module members who belonged to Ranchi in Jharkhand.
