Mumbai blasts: Informers fail cops in probe

The failure of informers to provide any concrete leads in the recent serial blasts is proving to be tough task for the investigative agencies to crack the case. Huge amount of money is at stake for the informers, but it is not proving to be a useful tool to trace the culprits.

Police officers believe that information on the blasts can be gathered only if investigating agencies will manage to penetrate into terrorist modules.

According to police sources, the amount of information received in journalist J Dey murder case was much more than the recent blasts. “The reason behind this is that the victim was known and it seemed to be an underworld activity. Those nabbed in the case had criminal records and hence they were always on the radar of the police and our informers. Our informers are very active as far as the underworld is concerned, but they were equally ineffective in cases of terrorism,” said a police officer, requesting anonymity.

“In order to get information about sleeper modules, the informers as well as the intelligence officers need to penetrate in to the modules. The process is very time consuming. Some times it takes years to get into a module and bust them,” said the officer.

The officer cited cases such as 2003 twin blasts, serial train blast and busting of Indian Mujahideen module. “It was not our regular informers that had helped us crack the 2003 twin blast case. A taxi driver, whose vehicle was used by the terrorists, had provided us the information that was worked upon and proved very crucial to crack the case. In the serial train blast case, it was technical surveillance that had led to the detection,” said the officer.