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Police zero in on Coimbatore blast culprits

In a major breakthrough, the Tamil Nadu police have established the identity of the outfit behind the recent serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore, its modus operandi and the place where the bombs were manufactured.

The criminal investigation team, it would appear, is closing in on the middle-level leaders of the outfit (which has since been banned) who acted as conduits between the top leadership and field workers.

Most of the middle level leaders have fled the city and are believed to be hiding in Kerala, according to sources.

The bombs, which rocked Coimbatore on February 14, were produced right in the heart of the city by the extremists who posed as waste cloth merchants.

The Fiat car, found abandoned with a deadly payload of 70 kilograms of explosives at Lokamanya street in R S Puram, was used to transport explosive materials to the place where the extremists assembled the bombs.

The Tamil Nadu government has set in motion the process of strengthening the CID team and creating a special cell to coordinate with the different wings of the police for a thorough investigation.

Over 20 extremists suspected to have been involved in the blasts have been arrested by the police so far. Some of them reportedly told the police that they had undergone training in Bangladesh.

What came as a surprise to the interrogating team was that two of the eight extremists, arrested from a hideout at Thirumal street in the wee hours of February 15, were neo-converts who had had been with the banned outfit for nearly six years.

The leadership of the banned outfit had been careful in choosing the field workers -- all of them were adolescents ready to carry out any job for the sake of adventure.

The police believe that about 70 per cent of the bombs produced by the extremists to create mayhem in the city has been accounted for. A search to unearth the remaining bombs is on. It is a daunting task as the bombs are believed hidden in a maze of lanes and by-lanes which are thickly populated.

The blasts left more than 60 dead and over 200 injured.

UNI

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