India claims arrested suspects linked to LeT

MUMBAI: Indian police claimed on Wednesday that they have arrested two men over the Pune restaurant bombing who have links to Pakistan-based militants.

The men, police said, are linked to the militants who had allegedly masterminded the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

“The pair were picked up on Monday and will be questioned about the blast,” said Rakesh Maria, the head of the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra, the state that Pune falls under.

The bomb ripped through the German Bakery, Pune, on February 13, killing 17 people including five foreign nationals. It was the first major attack in India since the 26/11 assault on Mumbai, which left 166 people dead. The Pune blast came soon after India and Pakistan agreed to resume an official dialogue that had come to an abrupt halt when New Delhi blamed the Mumbai attacks on the banned Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Maria, who led the investigation into the 26/11 attacks, told a news conference in Mumbai that one of the men arrested was the current LeT chief of Maharashtra. “The second had been trained by the LeT in Pakistan between January 2008 and the early part of this year,” he told reporters.

Police said that the investigation was still in its early stages but they had also established links to a home-grown militant outfit, the Indian Mujahideen, which has claimed several attacks in India in recent years.

During searches following the arrests, Maria said that police had found two kilogrammes of RDX high explosives similar to those used in the blast, bomb-making equipment and manuals, LeT literature, mobile phone SIM cards and cash. “In fact, they were scouting certain sites for the LeT. We have seen photos in the German Bakery case,” he said. Maria said that the plot to bomb the restaurant was hatched in January. “The bomb, which was hidden in a bag and triggered by remote control, was put together at an Internet cafe run by one of the men arrested,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2010.