Cops may crack German Bakery case in few days

PUNE BLAST

Mateen Hafeez | TNN

Mumbai: A month after the Pune’s German Bakery bomb blast in which 17 persons were killed, the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has claimed that it is close to solving the case. Highly placed sources said the ATS would solve the case within three to four days.

Though a senior official in the security establishment confirmed the development, he remained tightlipped about the identity of the group behind the attack or the suspects in the case. Last week, Pune police commissioner Satya Pal Singh had claimed that the perpetrators of the blast had been identified, but ATS chief Krish Pal Raghuvanshi remained non-committal. Sources said that the latest development was purely based on human intelligence.

“Our investigation is transparent. You will see the breakthrough soon, but we cannot divulge anything as of now,’’ Raghuvanshi said. After examining over 50 suspects associated with the banned outfits like SIMI, Indian Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, the police is now turning its investigation towards hardline rightwing organisations. A senior ATS official in Pune said that they were looking for a few members of the Sanatan Sanstha and the Abhinav Bharat group, besides those involved in the Pune’s terror training camp held in 2003. “We have not caught any of the suspects who were trained in bomb making at Sinhgarh in 2003,’’ said the official.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) have joined hands in the probe as the information provided by the state intelligence department and the intelligence bureau has not helped much. “Over 500 suspects have been questioned. The investigation
is at a crucial stage. We don’t want to jump to a conclusion yet,’’ said R G Kadam, deputy inspector general of the ATS.

Over two dozen phone calls made and received from Pakistani numbers were under surveillance since the Pune blast on February 13. However, examination of the owners of the phones did not help the investigators. They failed to find any leads about the perpetrators of the blast from a cellphone found at the blast site.

The Times of India, March 13, 2010