MUMBAI: Indian investigators turned to CCTV footage Thursday in their struggle to identify who was behind a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai that killed 17 people and injured more than 130.
Earlier Home Minister P. Chidambaram had said there had been no intelligence of an impending attack and, in the absence of any group claiming responsibility, the net of suspicion was flung far and wide.
"All groups hostile to India are on the radar. We are not ruling out anything, we are not ruling in anything. We are looking at everyone," he told reporters after visiting the scene of the three blasts.
The bombs made of ammonium nitrate -- an ingredient for fertiliser commonly used in improvised devices -- went off in the space of 15 minutes on Wednesday evening, in two crowded commercial areas of south Mumbai and a central residential district.
Specialist forensic teams, flown in from other cities, combed the blast sites for evidence, but Rakesh Maria, head of the Maharashtra state anti-terrorism squad said monsoon rains were hampering their work.
Maria, who declined to speculate on who might be responsible for the blasts, said investigators hoped CCTV images obtained from all three locations would provide them with a lead.
Crime branch officers have been looking at the footage since last night.
"It's quite a long-drawn process," Maria said, while appealing for public faith and trust in the police.
"No matter where the accused are, we will identify and bring them to book," he said.
The Home Ministry said police were interrogating suspected members of the homegrown militant group Indian Mujahideen, who had been arrested in Mumbai several days ago in connection with bomb blasts in the western state of Gujarat in 2008.
The strongest of Wednesday's coordinated explosions hit busy jewellery trading districts in the south of the city, the same area targeted two and half years ago in the traumatic 2008 assault blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
The memory of that attack, 60 hours of mayhem as 10 gunmen rampaged through the main railway station and luxury hotels, killing 166, is still fresh in the minds of Mumbaikars.
Relatives of the hurt and deceased gathered at the 13 city hospitals where victims were transferred in ambulances, cars and trucks driven by locals who rushed to help.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was due to arrive in Mumbai on Thursday evening to visit some of the injured in hospital.
The blasts came before a visit to India by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton next Tuesday and ahead of peace talks between the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers that are scheduled for New Delhi in the last week of July.
India's foreign ministry spokesman had said the talks would go ahead.
While the perpetrators were not known, initial suspicions fell on two Islamist groups that have targeted India in the past: the home-grown Indian Mujahideen and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
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I am very angry for the lost/injured lives. But it has got a silver lining. After the 26/11 the Govt. thought that the honeymoon was over and they can carry on sleeping. Now it will be different. The balance of recommendations not carried out after the 26/11 will now be implemented. The best will be to ascertain at the shortest time who was responsible and take appropriate devastating action wherever it may originate from.