A laptop, a safe house and a weeping SIMI man solve puzzle

A laptop belonging to Usman Agarbattiwala from which the electronic circuit for the Surat bombs was programmed...

A laptop belonging to Usman Agarbattiwala from which the electronic circuit for the Surat bombs was programmed; a safe house in Bharuch where the ammonium nitrate used for the Ahmedabad blasts was stored by Abdul Subban Qureshi; the confession of a weeping Zahid Sheikh that he indeed planted bombs on the cycles in Ahemdabad and last week’s crucial arrest of “foot-soldier” Imran Sheikh.

These are some of the key developments involving SIMI activists which, pieced together with a growing body of evidence in the form of interrogation reports and mobile phone records, resulted in the Gujarat Police’s dramatic admission that they had “cracked” the July 26 serial bomb blasts case in Ahmedabad. And unearthed crucial links to the earlier blasts in Jaipur and Bangalore.

While the Gujarat police named Mufti Abdul Bashir (arrested on Friday) as the “mastermind”, top officials in Delhi said that three other SIMI leaders had an equally important role to play. The two already apprehended are Sajid Mansuri, a former zonal secretary of SIMI in Gujarat and whose role in the May 13 blasts in Jaipur is under investigation, and Usman Agarbattiwala, a graduate from Vadodara’s MS University, whose seized laptop has been sent for forensic examination by the Gujarat police.

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The key suspect who remains untraced is Abdul Subban Qureshi. An explosive expert who holds a diploma in electronic engineering, Qureshi is the one who reportedly procured ammonium nitrate and timers for the Ahmedabad operation and attended the meetings of the SIMI to plan the serial blasts.

The motive, according to confessions of the activists arrested in the case, was revenge for the 2002 Gujarat riots and the March arrest of SIMI chief Safdar Nagori.

It was the scrutiny of mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) that led to the initial breakthrough. The suspicious pattern of use of Imran Shaikh’s mobile phone and frequent location changes led to his detention last week. While Shaikh claimed he was not linked to the blasts, he named another SIMI activist, Zahid Sheikh. It was Sheikh who first broke down during interrogation and admitted to having planted bombs and named at least three people who were involved in the purchase of the bicycles and delivery of the crude bombs.

The arrested suspects have also named Abdul Subban Qureshi as the SIMI leader who prepared the three e-mails which announced the role of the “Indian Mujahideen” in the blasts. They have said Subban Qureshi wrote the mails and forwarded them to Mufti Bashir.

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• Missing Link: Qureshi, explosive expert and hardware engineer from Mumbai

• Bashir: Terror’s link from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad, a BPL family depended on him

• Two former MS University students in plot: Vadodara’s terror connection

• When Bashir’s name came up first: the story of Adnan interrogation

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