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| Sunday, 6 November 2005 |
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Indians pin blast carnage on Kashmir rebels NEW DELHI, Nov 5 (AFP) A lack of hard evidence has not sidetracked Indian investigators from a firm belief that well-organised Kashmiri separatists planted the bombs that killed 62 people a week ago in the capital New Delhi. Full forensic reports were still expected - although much evidence was tarnished by the milling crowds at the two market areas devastated by the October 29 blasts. But investigators say traces of the military explosive RDX and the modus operandi of the killers point to hardline Kashmiri militants. The Islamic Inqilabi Mahaz (Islamic Revolutionary Group - IIM), which claimed responsibility for the blasts, is closely linked to the better known Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) - the prime suspect in India's eyes. A chorus of denials from Pakistan-based rebel groups such as LeT and Jaish-e-Mohammad has not swayed India. Security experts say the denials may even have been "sponsored" by Pakistan's military intelligence establishment, which monitors such groups and is wary of international condemnation. Arun Bhagat, former Intelligence Bureau (IB) director for India's domestic secret service, told AFP it was quite plausible for Lashkar-e-Taiba to revive the IIM name as a smokescreen to avoid US retribution. LeT, a pan-Islamic group which has been involved in a number of deadly attacks including some in Kashmir, is on a US list of terror groups. Indian police probing the New Delhi attacks, which also left 210 people injured, said they were in contact with experts who pursued IIM before it retreated from the disputed Himalayan region in 1993. "Initially we took the claim as a mere boast of an obscure group but now a wealth of data on the terrorists is available to us" that points to LeT, said a senior officer from the police anti-terrorism squad. B. Raman, who headed the anti-terrorism unit of India's external intelligence service when it launched a covert drive to crush IIM, accused his Pakistani counterparts of covertly backing anti-Indian groups such as IIM. "The IIM in the 1980s was a well-known group and it was very active fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan until 1987," he said. IIM, based in the Pakistani city of Lahore, came to Indian Kashmir in 1989 and fought Indian troops from a base in the southern Poonch sector until 1993, he said. "We got a whiff of their existence when 12 cross-border militants from Pakistan were intercepted while sneaking into Kashmir," where the armed rebellion has claimed more than 44,000 lives over 16 years, Raman said. "Thereafter, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence sent the Lashkar-e-Taiba to set up base in Kashmir with the IIM's help," he said. "The Lashkar then took over the leadership and the IIM became dormant with most of its cadres being arrested or killed," Raman told AFP, however noting IIM's ongoing contacts with Islamic extremists in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. IIM and another obscure group claimed responsibility for the slaying of four US oil workers in Pakistan, saying it was to protest the US trial of a Pakistani for the 1993 assassination of two Central Intelligence Agency agents. Bhagat said, however, that after 1997, IIM - registered in Pakistan as a charitable institution - melted into Lashkar-e-Taiba. "Nothing is material. These names, claims or denials have no meaning," he said. "The only thing solid is that all these forces have one goal: the dismemberment of India and Kashmir." |
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