Indian federal investigators on Thursday examined two unverified claims by militant groups that they were behind a deadly bomb blast at New Delhi’s High Court that left 12 people dead.
One emailed claim purportedly sent from Harkatul Jihad al-Islami (HuJI), a Pakistan-based militant group, was traced to an Internet cafe in Kishtwar, a town Indian-held Kashmir.
Local police told AFP that two brothers who owned the cafe and one employee were taken in for questioning, but no formal arrests had been made.
A separate email sent to media organisations on Thursday said the bomb was the work of the home-grown Indian Mujahideen outfit and threatened another attack on a shopping mall next week.
Neither claim was confirmed by police as genuine, but Internal Security Secretary UK Bansal said intelligence agencies were “seriously examining” both mails. Police separately released sketches of two suspects seen at the site of the blast. “We have some leads but it is too early to say which group is behind it,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told reporters on his plane as he returned late Wednesday from an official visit to Bangladesh.
“There are obviously unresolved problems and weaknesses in our system and the terrorists are taking advantage of that,” Singh said.
“We must work hard to plug those weaknesses,” he added.
It was the first major attack on Indian soil since triple blasts in Mumbai on July 13 that killed 26 people. It has still not been established who carried out those bombings. The Delhi High Court had also been targeted four months ago, when a low-intensity bomb exploded in the parking lot, causing no casualties and only minimal damage.
With some experts suggesting the May attack had been a dry run for Wednesday’s blast, a number of editorials in the press questioned why security at the court had not been tightened.
“With cars spilling out of the car park and no security check worth its name installed, it was a veritable invitation for anyone seeking to perpetrate violence,” said the Hindustan Times.
“The excuse of ‘not being able to prevent every attack’ is wearing perilously thin,” the newspaper said.
Highlighting the fact that no blast case in the last two years has been solved, The Times of India said it was “truly shocking” that the court could have been successfully targeted twice in such a brief space of time.
“This speaks of an extraordinarily lax security culture,” the Times said.
Indian Home Minister . Chidambaram held a high-level meeting on Thursday at which National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon was also present to take stock of the situation.
The United States, France, Britain and Pakistan all condemned the bombing, with Washington describing it as “cowardly”.
