Hamza made masjid bomb

By S A Ishaqui
Hyderabad, Sept. 4: Mohammed Abdul Bari alias Abu Hamza, the most wanted man of the city police, made the bomb which killed nine persons in the historic Mecca Masjid on May 18. Police have learnt that Bari reached the city in April, assembled the bomb at Chandrayanagutta with the help of two Pakistanis and one Bangladeshi and then slipped away.

Top sources said police got this vital information after conducting narco analysis tests on suspects of the Mecca Masjid blasts, Shaik Nayeem alias Sameer, a Lashkar-e-Toiba operative, Shoaib Jagirdar, who reportedly brought RDX into the city, and Imran, his nephew. Sleuths were stunned to learn that the dreaded terrorist they had been hunting for eight years had slipped in and out of the city without their having an inkling of it.

“These confessions on Bari’s role in the blasts are corroborated by intelligence inputs that he was missing at that time from his usual hideouts in Bangladesh and Riyadh,” sources said. City Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh said police had concrete information about Bari’s arrival in the city prior to Mecca Masjid blast. He, however, refused to divulge further information.

“It cannot be termed a failure of the police that he was not caught,” said the commissioner. “Sometimes it is difficult to track the movement of such people though there were some inputs.” Mr Balwinder Singh said the police were trying to find out the remaining RDX and added that the whole conspiracy could be unravelled once it was found. It was the special investigation cell probing the case relating to the unexploded bomb that collected the information about the movement of Bari.

Imran had initially told the police that some HUJI activists were in city but he did not give names. Later, Sameer confessed that Bari came to the city and made the bomb. Investigations revealed that Bari crossed the Bangladesh border in April along with three others. The RDX also arrived by the time he reached the city. He assembled two bombs and went back to Bangladesh a few days before the blast. Sameer also confessed that 800 grams of RDX was used to make two bombs out of which only one went off. Police has videographed his confession.