Eight days after the terror attack in Pune, a breakthrough in the probe has eluded Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) which is pinning its hopes on the forensic results of the DNA samples collected from the site of the blast at German Bakery here.
The death toll in the blast on the night of February 13 meanwhile rose to 15 when two students succumbed to their injuries at a hospital here on Sunday. The victims were identified as Rajeev Agarwal (23) from Symbiosis college and Vikas Tulsiyani (24) from D. Y. Patil College here. Rajeev and Vikas hailed from Kolkata and Delhi respectively, they added.
The forensic experts have lifted nearly 70 DNA samples from the scene of explosion and were trying to match them with those who had either been killed or were injured, official sources said on Sunday.
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A senior official said the agency wants to rule out all possibilities before moving on in the investigations and hinted that a profiling of all the DNA samples collected would be conducted.
The explosion had not left any clues about the mode of detonations but there were suspicions that either a timer or a mobile phone was used for detonation of the bomb, sources in the investigating agency said.
The ATS along with security agencies were examining almost all the telephone calls in and around the German Bakery that was picked at the time of the blast.
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The ATS has drawn a blank so far from the interrogation report of a few jailed Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists to get some leads on who could be behind the attack in which two foreigners were killed.
The investigators were also baffled by the quickness with which the local police had washed the blast site with water thinking that was a gas cylinder blast.