Posts Tagged ‘Pune’
Written by admin on 15 February 2010
New Delhi/Pune, Feb 15 – Investigators in Pune’s terror attack are increasingly veering to the view that the Indian Mujahideen (IM) was behind the bombing because the city – an IT and educational hub popular also with foreigners – was once used by the group as its ‘important base and recruiting ground’, said an official privy to the probe.
Sleuths of Maharashtra’s Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) scouring for clues into the deadly blast that killed nine people are also closely monitoring CCTV footage from near the t site that shows images of two potential suspects entering the German Bakery where the bombing took place.
The arrested members of the IM, a home-grown Islamist terror outfit with suspected links to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), are being interrogated again in connection with the Pune blast.
They include a recently arrested operative Shahzad Ahmed, alias Pappu, whose arrest Feb 2 in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh had caused a major dent in the organisation – believed to be an offshoot of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Security agencies say local IM members have been trained in arms and explosive handling in Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Ahmed was believed to have been trained as a pilot for a possible 9/11-type attack.
‘From the preliminary examination, it (the blast) appears to be the handiwork of the IM,’ said the official said, on condition of anonymity.
‘The IM had used Pune as one of its important bases and the city was on its radar for sometime,’ the official told IANS.
The group first came into the limelight after it owned up to the wave of bombings in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi in 2007 and 2008.
Iqbal and Riyaz Bhatkal, the two brothers presently hiding in Karachi in a LeT camp and considered top leaders of the outfit, were in Pune for sometime in 2006 when they set up a terror module in the city that has a large number of Indian and foreign students studying such diverse subjects as management, media, engineering, films, software development, etc.
With the Bhatkal brothers in Karachi are two other IM leaders, Mufti Sufiyan and Rasool Parti, according to intelligence sources.
Iqbal, a hardcore Islamist, was part of the Tableeghi Jamaat – an organisation of ‘puritanic Muslims’ – and used to preach in the Pune Jamia Masjid and other mosques in the city.
‘Under the garb of the Tableeghi Jamaat the Bhatkals did talent hunting for the Indian Mujahideen in the city,’ the official said.
The brothers met Mansoor Peerbhoy, a software professional, in Pune in 2007 through a common friend Asif Bashir Sheikh, another IM operative. Peerbhoy, accused in the 2008 blasts in various Indian cities and in police custody, was recruited in the IM soon and tasked to look after its IT cell.
According to sources, Peerbhoy, who has revealed his rendezvous with the Bhatkals in his interrogation, and his colleague Sheikh are being questioned afresh for clues into Saturday’s bombing.
The two used to stay in a rented accommodation in Kondava in Pune before shifting to Mangalore in August 2008.
Besides, Sheikh and Peerbhoy other members of the IM’s Pune base were Mubeen Qadir Sheikh, Akbar Chaudhary, Aniq Syed, Abdus Subhan Qureshi and Mohsin Chaudhary. Except for Chaudhary and Qureshi all its Pune members have been arrested.
Intelligence agencies believe that Qureshi and Chaudhary could have been behind the German Bakery bombing. They have have launched a massive manhunt to arrest the two who ‘have not fled the country’, said the sources.
Intelligence agencies that collected evidence from the blast said the materials used, RDX and ammonium nitrate, in the blast and the pattern of the bombing point towards the IM’s modus operandi.
Tags: New Delhi, Pune
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Written by admin on 15 February 2010
Pune, Feb 15 – H. Nicolas, the Canadian creative director for a gaming company, had planned to have dinner at the German Bakery the day it was bombed to rubble claiming nine lives. The 36-year-old may be shaken but says he has no intention of quitting Pune – or India.
‘It was unsettling when we heard the loud noise,’ Nicolas said in an interview, recalling the horror of Saturday evening when a powerful bomb concealed in a backpack went off in the eatery in India’s worst terror attack since the Mumbai massacre of November 2008.
‘Imagine, we were planning on going there that night,’ he added.
Nicolas came to Pune to stay for two years. Like most foreigners here, he never thought anything like this could ever happen in Pune.
And he’s not going back anytime soon. The chances of another bomb exploding in Pune, he said, were slim. ‘That means, rationally this city is now safe.’
Two days after the Saturday terror, which left six Indians and three foreigners dead and injured some 60 people, foreigners who live in Pune in large numbers appear determined to stay put in the city.
Most inmates of the landmark Osho ashram, located near the bomb site, are foreigners. Pune is also home to a small army of students from abroad as well as those who have come here to work in multinational companies.
No wonder, the injured belonged to countries as diverse as Sudan, Nepal, Taiwan, Iran and Germany.
Russian Eelyana Younesco, 38, who has visited Pune several times for the Osho retreat, says the bombing will not stop her from coming back to India.
A scientist and a teacher-turned-priest, she feels that what happened at the German Bakery — a favourite with foreigners and young Indians — was not the kind of organised terror one saw in Mumbai in 2008 when Pakistani terrorists went on a killing spree.
‘I was just around the corner of the bakery waiting for a friend. When he didn’t show up, I decided to go towards the shops to buy ‘jholas’ (bags). Then I went for my meditation,’ Younesco told IANS.
‘I heard a loud noise but didn’t realise that it had demolished my favourite bakery. But this attack does not deter me from staying here. I am going to complete my (Osho) course.’
Advertising professional and yoga instructor Katja Staub is a German. She is visiting Pune for the first time. She is not sure if she will come to India again.
‘It is a bit difficult to answer whether I would like to be in Pune (after Saturday),’ Staub told IANS. ‘Until Saturday I could have given an easy reply. But today, I will think about extending my stay.
‘I was 100 metres away from the bakery when I heard a loud blast. It was deafening but I didn’t pay it so much heed then. It is only later did I realise that I was so close to the explosion.’
After a moment’s pause, however, Staub appeared to change her mind.
‘For now I think I will stay back in Pune and complete my trip. I don’t want to give the terrorist the power to change my plans,’ Katja ended on a positive note.
Tags: Pune
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Written by admin on 15 February 2010
Pune, Feb 15 – Investigators looking for clues in the Pune terror attack were Monday examining CCTV footage from a luxury hotel opposite the German Bakery, where a blast killed nine people Saturday, an official close to the probe said.
The footage shows images of two potential suspects entering the German Bakery, a popular restaurant in the upscale Koregaon Park in Pune, the official said. The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) are monitoring the video.
‘It shows two suspects. One is talking over the phone and the other is holding a backpack,’ the official said.
The footage has been obtained from the CCTV cameras installed on the gates of the luxury hotel situated across the road from the German Bakery where a powerful explosion Saturday evening killed nine people and injured nearly 60 — mostly youngsters.
The official said the footage was too ‘grainy and coarse’ to give any clues about the suspects in its present form.
‘But the investigators are getting it closely examined and may enhance the generation of the video to get some clues,’ he said.
‘They are looking for the suspect’s distinctive physical features. It can reveal height, his clothes, pattern of walking,’ he said, adding that they were searching for even the smallest clues that could aid in the investigation.
‘As of now we are not even able to determine the colour of the backpack in the footage,’ the official said when asked whether the bag that contained the explosive was apparently blue and red in colour.
The bag was hidden under a table in the German Bakery.
The bomb went off when a waiter, among the dead, tried to open the unattended bag noticed by a group of friends. Two siblings from the group also died in the blast.
Tags: Pune
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Written by admin on 14 February 2010
Pune, Feb 14 – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday said the terrorists who killed seven Indians and two foreigners here in India’s worst attack since the Mumbai massacre must be quickly brought to justice as the opposition sought the axing of upcoming talks with Pakistan.
While four teams began probing the horrific bombing at the popular German Bakery Saturday evening, Home Minister P. Chidambaram hinted at Islamist links, saying Pakistan-born American David C. Headley, an activist of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, had visited Pune in 2007-08.
Pakistan moved quickly to condemn the Pune terror strike, with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani saying his country wanted ‘good relations with India. We want (upcoming) talks to be meaningful’.
In a decision that has taken many by surprise, foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan are set to meet in New Delhi Feb 25. India snapped its composite dialogue process after 10 Pakistani terrorists sneaked into Mumbai in November 2008 and slaughtered 166 Indians and foreigners.
With Pune tense but calm, Manmohan Singh asked the central and Maharashtra governments to ‘take coordinated and effective action’ and speed up the probe into the bombing.
He told Chidambaram, who visited Pune and called on the prime minister later, to ensure that ‘the culprits responsible for this heinous act are identified and brought to justice at the earliest’.
No group has claimed responsibility for the devastating bomb attack that killed nine people, including a 26-year-old Iranian student and a 37-year-old Italian woman attached to the nearby Osho ashram.
All the others who died were Indians, including a brother and sister from Kolkata.
Sixty people were injured, and at least one of them who had suffered 78 percent burns and multiple fractures was said to be in critical condition and unlikely to survive.
Speaking in Pune, Chidambaram linked the bombing to Headley and said the terrorists chose to attack a place frequented by foreigners and young Indians.
He said that Headley had surveyed the Osho ashram and the Jewish Chabad House when he quietly visited Pune to pluck out possible targets in India for his Lashkar handlers.
‘This particular area has been on (terrorist) radar for sometime. The Chabad House was surveyed by Headley. Police were sensitised that the Chabad House was a target so was the Osho ashram. These were the hard targets,’ the minister said.
He said the terrorist who brought the bomb to the 32-square-metre bakery, which he called a ‘soft target’, might have posed as a customer and left behind the backpack containing the explosive under a table.
The bomb exploded with a deafening roar when a waiter at the bakery tried to open the backpack. Shopkeeper Santosh Bhosle, who was among the first to rush to the site, told IANS Sunday that he had never seen such a bloody scene in his life.
Chidambaram said the case would be cracked soon. He said it was too early to speculate what the motive of the attack was.
The authorities announced a compensation of Rs.5 lakh to the families of the killed. Manmohan Singh announced a further Rs.2 lakh each for the next of kin of those killed and Rs.1 lakh each to those injured.
Anxious and grieving relatives waited outside Pune hospitals Sunday hoping the wounded would recover soon. A German man, finding it difficult to speak in English, moved from one hospital to another looking for his wife.
The authorities issued a high alert in New Delhi, Indore in Madhya Pradesh and Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.
In Maharashtra, hundreds of policemen spread out checking at random vehicles, train and bus passengers, those visiting major religious shrines and vital installations.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) urged the government to call off the proposed talks with Pakistan, saying Islamabad still harboured anti-India terrorists.
‘Terror and talks cannot co-exist. When terror threatens India, then not talking is also a legitimate diplomatic option,’ BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley said. His colleague Sushma Swaraj echoed the demand.
Jaitley accused the government of taking an unexplained ‘U turn’ on its negotiating stand in the peace dialogue with Pakistan.
The US and Britain quickly moved to ask their citizens in India to be on alert.
Tags: Pune
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Written by admin on 14 February 2010
Pune, Feb 14 – The FM stations in Pune were playing love songs interspersed with the police chief’s message ‘do not panic’. As the city was still reeling under the shock of the bloodying bomb blast that killed nine people here Saturday, couples and youth said no to Valentine’s Day.
Abhishek Sawant, a student of Pune’s famous Fergusson College, said: ‘People come in to my city and create such a tragedy. How can one think of even any celebration post 24 hours? I will definitely not be in any kind of mood to celebrate, and anyways, if you feel that there is someone for you, there is no need to celebrate especially on Valentine’s Day.’
Shruti Kadu, software professional, feels that with such a panic situation in the city It would be foolhardy to even think of celebrating love.
‘Agreed that Valentine’s Day is about spreading the message of love, but with such kind of incident, it is making people wary of heading out of their homes,’ she said.
Many events planned in the city’s hotels have been cancelled.
Sandeep Dharma said: ‘These events are supposed to be fun filled romantic evenings. But with this blast, people are scared. And with an high alert announced, and as well as on moral grounds, it is necessary to show serious and matured reactions. This certainly is not the time for celebrations but to express our courage and unity as Indians.’
German Bakery in the city’s Koregaon Park area was rocked by a blast Saturday evening that killed nine people, including two foreigners, and injured nearly 60 people.
The eatery was a popular joint frequented by the young and foreign nationals.
Tags: Pune
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Written by admin on 14 February 2010
Pune, Feb 14 – The media should keep away from hospitals in Pune where victims of the eatery blast are recuperating, the city police chief warned Sunday. ‘This is not just a request, it is our official direction,’ he said.
Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh said at a press conference here that the media should not interview any blast victim, including those at hospitals.
‘I want to appeal and request media persons not to go to hospitals where the injured are admitted or talk to them about the incident. This is against national interest.
‘It is not just a request, it is also our official direction. Hospitals have also been directed to not allow anyone in the hospitals. Anyone violating this would have to face the consequences,’ Singh told reporters.
Nine people, including two foreign nationals were killed, while 60 people (48 Indians and 12 foreign nationals) were injured in the blast at the German Bakery Saturday evening.
While 19 of the injured have been discharged from hospitals, 41 are still undergoing treatment, Singh said.
Tags: Pune
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