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Delhi blasts mastermind arrested
Tariq Ahmed had allegedly hatched the plot along with two Lashkar terrorists.
Two weeks after the serial blasts ripped through the national capital, Delhi Police on Sunday claimed to have cracked the case with the arrest of a Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist who allegedly coordinated and financed the operation.
Tariq Ahmed Dar (32), who was working as a sales representative of multinational pharmaceutical firm Johnson and Johnson, had allegedly hatched the plot along with two Lashkar terrorists of Jammu and Kashmir Abu Al Qama and Abu Huzefa, Delhi Police Commissioner KK Paul told a press conference in New Delhi.
Huzefa was a Pakistani and a LeT commander in Kashmir valley.
Just days before the blasts, Rs 4.86 lakh had been deposited to Tariq's HDFC Bank account in Srinagar from a Middle-East country. The money was meant for financing the blasts in which RDX, though not in its pure form, was used, Paul said.
He said at least four persons were involved in the October 29 triple blasts which killed 60 people and injured more than 200 others.
While two of the conspirators and executers are from Jammu and Kashmir, the others were "foreign nationals," Paul said without identifying their nationality.
Putting at rest speculation that the blasts were the joint handiwork of LeT and Hizbul Mujahideen, the police chief said investigations so far showed the involvement of only LeT.
Dar had been arrested by Delhi Police from Srinagar on Thursday night with the help of central investigating agencies. He had been brought to Delhi on Friday and a local court remanded to 14 days police custody, Paul said.
He had come to Delhi between October 4 and 6, in the garb of official work, allegedly to choose the sites for planting the bombs. After going back to Srinagar, he had hatched the conspiracy along with Huzefa, the LeT 'commander' of Jammu and Kashmir, and Al Qama, the organisation's Srinagar chief.
Thereafter, Dar was instrumental in bringing together the bombers, the police chief said. "The identity of the bombers is more or less confirmed and we are searching for them," Paul said.
The Police Commissioner said that though Dar himself was "probably" not in Delhi at the time of the blasts, he was the "financer, coordinator, spokesperson and frontman" of Lashkar.
In fact, Dar had called up the Kashmir News Agency in Srinagar denying the role of Lashkar in the Delhi blasts in order to mislead the investigating agencies.
Though Dar was working as a sales representative, he had "intimate contacts" with top Lashkar terrorists, Paul said.
While he declined to divulge details about the investigation, he said "we have sufficient evidence to prove the conspiracy."
About 300 policemen worked for the last two weeks to unravel the conspiracy.
Some batteries and part of an electronic timer recovered from the blast sites in Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar and details provided by the driver and passengers of the bus in Govindpuri who had seen the explosive device were used to reconstruct them.
Dar was arrested in April this year upon his return from Haj as the security agencies seized foreign currency from him. He was also arrested in connection with possession of illegal arms, Paul said, adding he was out on bail in the case.
Dar, a science graduate, was working for Johnson and Johnson since May 1997. Besides, he wrote articles for 'Mount Valley Magazine' during the course of which he came in contact with Javed Sheikh, a reporter who later joined Hizbul Mujahideen and later became its 'Divisional Commander' of Harban area.
Dar remained in touch with Sheikh but after the latter was killed in an encounter in 2003, he started working for Huzefa. Besides functioning as a spokesperson for Lashkar, Dar also arranged treatment for injured members of the outfit.
The police chief said forensic reports revealed that RDX, though not in a pure form, had been used in the explosions. Asked whether there was any reason that the terrorists chose the busy markets just before Diwali, he said "they perhaps wanted to cause maximum impact."
Dar was being taken to the sites of the explosions and other places he had mentioned to verify his account. Police teams were also conducting searches in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and some other states for the terrorists still absconding.
