Mumbai report flip-flop

Mumbai, Sept. 7: Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan today told reporters arrests had been made in the July 13 blasts case, only to backtrack seconds later. Pressed for details, he said “there were some detentions, not arrests”. Mumbai police sources later told  that the detainees had been let off a fortnight back “after the track went cold”. The farce, which revealed the floundering probe bedevilled by inter-agency rivalries and squabbles, unfolded after Chavan had called a meeting to review the security of Bombay High Court within hours of the blast at Delhi High Court this morning. The meeting was attended by Mumbai police commissioner K.P. Patnaik and anti-terror squad chief Rakesh Maria. Nearly two months after the July 13 blasts that killed 25 people and injured dozens, investigators are still clueless about the suspects. The ATS and the National Investigating Agency (NIA) are jointly probing the case but are locked in a bitter war over turf, and had been even refusing to share information. With no breakthrough yet, sources said the home ministry last month threatened the ATS that the probe would be handed over to the NIA. “(Union home minister P.) Chidambaram was livid about the status of the probe and inter-agency rivalry. The minister is partial towards the NIA but unfortunately, the NIA too does not have much to show on its report card. Maria could bargain for some more time and the probe is still being headed by him,” said a source in the Mumbai ATS. The ATS had claimed the involvement of the Indian Mujahideen after it started the probe on July 14 by questioning two suspects. Mubeen Khan, 32, and Ayyub Shaikh, 28 were accused of stealing four cars, two of which were used in an earlier attack. Later, in the first week of August when Maria met Chidambaram, the track of investigation had changed and the ATS chief claimed he was nearing a breakthrough. The officer said the man who had stolen the silver Honda Activa scooter, apparently used in the Opera House blast on July 13, had been identified. The scooter thief, Bhima, a roadside mechanic in the Opera House area, and another mechanic, Raj, were detained for questioning. The lead was significant as a forensic laboratory had suggested that the Opera House bomb had been planted in the scooter. The scooter belonged to Jayant D. Shah, a hardware dealer in south Mumbai, who had loaned it to his employee Arjun Choudhary on July 8 and gone to Ahmedabad. On July 15, Choudhary had filed an FIR with the local police station saying the scooter had been stolen on July 12, a day before the blasts. “After both Jayant and Arjun gave their statements, the ATS went after the scooter thief,” the ATS source said. Bhima and Raj were set free around August 13 after both denied, under sustained interrogation by ATS and NIA sleuths, any role in the blasts. The ATS and the NIA then decided to put their rivalries behind and work together. Armed with leads from NIA investigators, the ATS sent its men to Rajkot, Gujarat, in late August. “They went to seek information on underworld dons Aftab Ansari, Asif Raza Khan Pathan and Fazal Ur Rehman alias Fazlu, who were named over a decade ago in the kidnapping of a leading local jeweller’s son,” said a Maharashtra home department official. The ATS team seemed to be unaware of the fact that Ansari had been sentenced to death in the 2002 attack on the American Center in Calcutta. Asif was killed in a police encounter in the late 1990s.“It was not Asif, but his brother Amir that we went for,” an ATS official said. “He is one of the founding members of the IM, suspected to be behind the July triple blasts.”