M A I N   N E W S

Sketches of suspects released
Lashkar-e-Kahar claims triggering Varanasi blasts
Shahira Naim
Tribune News Service

Varanasi, March 9
The police today released computer-generated sketches of two suspected terrorist behind the serial blasts in Varanasi.

Eyewitnesses confirmed that the likeness was of the two persons who had left a bag containing a pressure cooker containing bombs at a roadside “golgappa” vendor near the Ganges hotel.

Releasing the sketches, SSP Varanasi Navneet Sikera said the sketches had been prepared with the help of the “golgappa” vendor at whose shop these young men ate “golgappas”.

According to Mr Sikera, when the young men were leaving the bag behind on the pretext of checking something from the next shop and did not return for sometime the vendor got suspicious and reported the matter to the police. The police discovered a pressure cooker and two bombs.

Giving a description of the two suspects, the vendor said the young men spoke Hindi with a Delhi accent that is very different from the way it is spoken locally. He also said they distinctly looked like Kashmiris.

“'The sketches would be provided to all police stations and pasted at public places,” said Mr Sikera.

According to him, the serial blast was not the handiwork of just two suspects. “There definitely was more than one team, as one team could not have managed multiple sites with such a short-time gap between them,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, no major clue was found from the videotape of the wedding of the marriage being solemnised at the Sankatmochan temple at the time of the blast.

Mr Sikera said the police repeatedly watched the video and by a process of elimination tried to identify suspicious characters at the time of the blast. Nothing worthwhile had come out of the exercise.

DGP Yashpal Singh, who visited various sites of the blast today and even met patients, did not give much credence to the Lashkar-e-Kahar, an unknown militant outfit, for owning responsibility of the blasts.

According to him, prima facie it was very difficult to say if the call made in Srinagar was genuine or a hoax. “Only after probing the matter can one safely say anything in this regard,” he said.

During sustained investigation, it was found that five pressure cookers — two still untraced — were bought by the suspected terrorists to be used in the preparation of improvised explosive device in the blasts.

The lead came after the police managed to track down the shop in the wholesale market in Harhasarai from where the pressure cookers had been bought.

Police sources confirmed that raids were conducted at two places where the suspect terrorists may have stayed, one in the Dashashmedh area and other in the Dalmandi area.

Meanwhile, a team of senior police officials left for Delhi today to interrogate some Bangladeshi accused who had been arrested from Kolkata in connection with the blasts.

UNI ADDS
Srinagar: A hitherto unknown militant outfit, Lashkar-e-Kahar, today claimed the responsibility of the twin blasts in the temple town of Varanasi in which about 17 persons were killed and more than 100 others were wounded on Tuesday.

The Current News Service (CNS), a local news agency here, received a call from a person who identified himself as Abdul Jabbar, the spokesman for the outfit, this morning. 

The caller claimed the responsibility for the twin bomb blasts in Varanasi on March 7.

The caller threatened more such attacks. 

However, almost all separatist groups here have condemned the blasts.