Police on Sunday said they were yet to verify Lashker-e-Taiba operative Toufiq Akmal Hashmi's claim in a media interview that some 17 terrorists were involved in the July 11 bomb blasts on commuter trains in Mumbai.
A court in Mumbai on Sunday morning remanded Hashmi to the custody of the Anti-Terrorism Squad till September 13 but police officials said his interrogators are yet to verify his claims made to a TV news channel.
Hashmi, who was arrested by the Army in Jammu and Kashmir on August 23, had claimed in an interview that 17 men—some of them Kashmiris and the others from Pakistan—were involved in the bombings that killed 200 people. He claimed all but one of the men had left Mumbai.
This gave rise to speculation that the unidentitied body of a victim of July 11 blasts, kept in a morgue in Mumbai, could be that of the terrorist who had stayed in Mumbai.
ATS chief KP Raghuvanshi, however, told reporters the agency had no confirmation yet in this regard.
"We decided to bring Hashmi to Mumbai after hearing his interview, but so far we haven't got any information from him," Raghuvanshi said.
{{/usCountry}}"We decided to bring Hashmi to Mumbai after hearing his interview, but so far we haven't got any information from him," Raghuvanshi said.
{{/usCountry}}Raghuvanshi said the only information they had at the moment was that Hashmi was a Pakistani national and that he served in the Pakistan Army for a while.
Hashmni is the tenth person to be arrested in connection with the blasts.
Raghuvanshi said the ATS was focussing on finding out the local persons involved in the blasts. "It is the missing link," he said. He refused to say whether Hashmi could be deliberately misleading investigators.