Over a month has gone by, but Delhi Police is yet to make any headway in the suspected terror strikes outside the historic Jama Masjid, which created a security scare ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
The city police has announced a Rs. 10-lakh reward for providing information about the two bikers who opened fire at a Taiwanese media crew at Jama Masjid on September 19, but investigators have not got any credible information.
A day ahead of the announcement of the reward, two Kashmiris had approached the police claiming that they were sent to paste inflammatory posters on Ayodhya in central Delhi by some persons who were harassing their families.
Though police investigated whether those people who sent the Kashmiris to Delhi were involved in the firing incident, no breakthrough was made in this direction.
Investigators have questioned over 50 people in connection with the strikes but “no concrete” headway has been made in the probe while several teams are in Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai to find some links in the case, a senior police official said.
Police initially attributed the firing on Taiwanese media crew and a car catching fire after a “crudely-circuited and poorly-assembled” device went off within two hours after the first incident to “disgruntled youths and local criminal gangs” ruling out involvement of any organised terror outfit.
The assertion came despite the outlawed Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the strikes and warned of more attacks ahead of the Games in an e-mail sent to several media organisations.
However, the next day Delhi Police did a somersault saying they cannot rule out a terror angle and even Police Commissioner Y.S. Dadwal exclaimed “who said that” when asked about the investigator’s stand the previous day.
Even police had on September 19 maintained that there were no traces of any explosives in the device which they recovered from the car when already a case under the Explosives Act was registered.
However, later it came to light that ammonium nitrate was used in the device which had two timers — 11.30 am and 12 noon — set for explosion. No RDX or detonators were recovered, police said.
The only headway it could make was tracking the IM e-mail to Borivalli in Mumbai suburbs. The e-mail was sent using a Tata mobile and it had a SIM purchased by an unidentified youth in the name of a woman.
The Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad prepared a sketch and even went to two addresses provided by central intelligence agencies as the youth had purchased two SIM cards.
Investigators suspect that a laptop might have been used to attach a PDF file in the e-mail sent by IM claiming responsibility for the attack and it was located to a server in Norway. The SIM card was used in a GPS activated mobile phone.
