Karnataka police on Saturday suspected the involvement of banned SIMI in Friday's serial blasts as it defused an explosive kept in a cement flowerpot near a shopping mall in posh Koramangla area.
The possibility of a "retaliatory attack" by the Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which has in recent months faced an intense crackdown in Karnataka after its terror modules were unearthed, is being probed, highly placed sources said.
Several SIMI activists have been arrested in the state in the last few months.
Police defused an explosive with a microchip, detonator and ammonium nitrate kept near a shopping mall in Koramangala.
Investigations are on to track down a youth wearing a red T-shirt who, witnesses said, had fled after placing the grey-shaped object in front of Hyderabad house on the Bangalore-Hosur road, Police Commissioner S Bidari told reporters.
Serial blasts in nine locations in the city on Friday left two persons dead and injured 12.
State DGP R Srikumar and Bangalore Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari declined to speak on the leads saying the investigation into the blasts was in progress.
{{/usCountry}}State DGP R Srikumar and Bangalore Police Commissioner Shankar Bidari declined to speak on the leads saying the investigation into the blasts was in progress.
{{/usCountry}}"Our investigation has definitely showed that we have local contact (behind the blasts) here", Srikumar told PTI. "Whether it's entirely local or there are outside elements' influence here (in the blasts)..It's a matter of investigation which is yet to be firmed up".
Bidari told PTI that the police have a number of leads and the investigation has made "some progress" but added that it has not "zeroed-in" on any group.
Srikumar rejected a perception in some quarters that the blasts were intended to create only panic and not to harm people.
"We have collected remnants from each of the spot", he said. "We have come to the conclusion that these were professionally assembled bombs intended to cause damage".