The sketch of two suspected terrorists involved in the series bomb blasts at Varanasi, released by the police on Thursday. — Photo: PTI

NEW DELHI: Pressure to demonstrate rapid results in the investigation of Tuesday's terror strikes in Varanasi may be skewing assessments of evidence propelling premature claims of progress, intelligence and police officials familiar with the Lashkar-e-Taiba's pan-India operations have told The Hindu.

While the Lashkar-e-Taiba remains the principal suspect in the terror bombings of the Sankat Mochan temple and the Cantonment railway station, experts said claims that ethnic-Kashmiri operatives executed the attacks needed to be treated with caution. Officials also contested claims that a top Lashkar-e-Taiba operative, shot dead on Wednesday, had a role in the bombings.

Although officials in Uttar Pradesh claim to have evidence that Lashkar commander Mohammad Salim bin-Aziz may have had a central role in organising the Varanasi terror strike, sources inside the investigation said no material substantiating this proposition had been discovered. Bin-Aziz, a criminal-turned-terrorist, who operated under the alias `Salar', was shot dead in Lucknow just hours after the bombings.

While investigators were indeed able to obtain information on a range of contacts developed by the Lashkar commander, including operatives based in Jammu and Kashmir, no sign was found that the networks he ran were positioned to execute a terror strike. In fact, bin-Aziz was attempting to procure explosives for a major operation, a fact which suggests that the threat his networks posed was not imminent.

The sources said bin-Aziz made contact with a Lashkar unit in the frontier district of Handwara late last year, asking for supplies of weapons and explosives. At the time, he was shuttling between Lucknow, Kanpur and Ghazipur, attempting to recruit cadre for new Lashkar cells that would operate in Uttar Pradesh. After some weeks of silence, bin-Aziz resurfaced in late February, and asked for delivery of the explosives to Lucknow.

Forensic tests have made clear that the military-grade explosives bin-Aziz was attempting to obtain were not available to the perpetrators of the Varanasi bombings, undermining claims that a Jammu and Kashmir-based squad carried out the bombings. Tests have shown that the bombs used in Varanasi were made with aluminium nitrate, a chemical, which along with potassium chlorate, has been frequently used by the Lashkar cells operating across India.

However, where Jammu and Kashmir-based Lashkar squads have directly carried out strikes, they have in general preferred to fabricate devices with RDX. RDX has a far greater weight-for-weight impact than potassium chlorate or ammonium nitrate-based explosive compounds, and is therefore easy to transport. Unlike ammonium nitrate or potassium chlorate-based bombs, it also holds out little risk of accidental detonation.

The Jammu and Kashmir-based Lashkar operatives thus ferried RDX for use in New Delhi last year, and executed the bombings themselves. This January, the Mumbai police arrested three operatives, who had transported electronic explosives-detonators from Jammu and Kashmir, and were waiting for a consignment of RDX to be delivered by a separate Lashkar squad.

However, low-grade explosives have generally been used by Lashkar cells made up of local recruits, who in general operate independently of the Jammu and Kashmir-based commanders. Lashkar operative Amir Hashim `Kamran' used such devices in Delhi, Jalandhar and Rohtak. Similar devices were used by the Lashkar bomb-maker Azam Ghauri in 2000, and again by the perpetrators of the 2003 bombings in Mumbai.

Cultural biases

Intelligence officials familiar with the Lashkar said it would have made no sense for the organisation to despatch operatives from Jammu and Kashmir when local cadre and resources were available. "It is possible the eyewitnesses accounts which suggest that outsiders brought the bombs to Varanasi are coloured by cultural biases and after-the-fact speculation," one senior officer said. Officials said hundreds of hours of work on analysing telephone records, questioning witnesses and tapping counter-intelligence assets remained before any serious determination could be made who the perpetrators of the bombings might be.

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