Amid ‘intel failure’, Shah to meet chiefs of probe agencies today

Home Minister Amit Shah has called a high-level meeting of all heads of investigative agencies on Tuesday morning to take stock of the probe into the car blast near the Red Fort. In the meeting, they will also discuss any possible conspiracy angle behind the incident.

The meeting comes in the wake of a major blast taking place just hours after 2,900 kg of explosives were recovered from Faridabad on Monday morning, indicating a possible intelligence failure.

According to sources, heads of all agencies involved in probing the blast incident like the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Intelligence Bureau, National Security Guards (NSG) and Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) will be attending the meeting on November 11.

With the FSL team collecting samples from the site till late on Monday night and the car owner having been arrested from Gurugram, the agencies are looking at all possible angles, most prominent being the involvement of terror groups from Pakistan. The inputs related to these possibilities are likely to be discussed in the meeting, said the sources.

Although the police suspect some explosives were being transported, the nature of the blast is still being ascertained.

Asked if it was a terrorist attack, the Home Minister said, “We are keeping all angles open. Until the samples recovered from the site are analysed by the FSL and the NSG, it is difficult to say anything about it. However, we will investigate all angles with determination.”

The blast of such magnitude has taken place in the national capital after 14 years. The previous such incident was in 2011, when a powerful bomb placed in a briefcase outside the Delhi High Court had killed 12 persons. On September 13, 2008, at least five serial bombs had exploded in the Capital’s Connaught Place, killing 25 and injuring more than 100 persons. The Indian Mujahideen group had claimed responsibility of the blasts.

Earlier in October 2005, 66 people were killed when three blasts had ripped through several markets in New Delhi ahead of Diwali.

In June 2000, two persons, including an eight-year-old girl, were killed and about a dozen injured in two powerful bomb blasts near the Red Fort in Delhi. Three persons were killed and 73 wounded in blasts outside places of worship in the Chandni Chowk area in November 1997.