Same HuJI module, now led by Amjad, struck in Hyd and Jaipur

NEW DELHI: Shahid Bilal, who masterminded several blasts across the country including Hyderabad, may be dead. But his ghost continues to haunt India.

Intelligence agencies have picked up clear signs that the terror network he nurtured may have carried out Tuesday’s serial blasts in Jaipur.

Mohammed Amjad alias Khaja, Bilal’s deputy who took over as the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami’s (HuJI) operations chief after Bilal was shot dead in Karachi on August 30 last year, is emerging as the key suspect in the Jaipur case.

Amjad has an Interpol alert against him for his role in last year’s Hyderabad blasts. Sources believe he is shuttling between Karachi and Bangladesh.

According to two sources within the Indian intelligence set-up, the Jaipur blasts have the signatures of Bilal’s network, which carried out the blasts in Hyderabad last year. DNA had exposed the killing of Bilal last year in Karachi.

Now the spotlight turns to Amjad, the new face of terror in India. Very little is known about Amjad, but many sources say he is a Bangladeshi. His name first cropped during investigations into last year’s bomb attacks at the Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad on May 18. Along with Bilal he also played a key role in the twin blasts in Hyderabad later on August 25. Within weeks of the attacks Bilal was killed, probably by his handlers in ISI or rivals.

As investigators struggle to find a breakthrough on Jaipur, in Indore and Bangalore intelligence and police officers are combing through interrogation reports of several terror suspects belonging to a SIMI faction arrested in recent times. It clearly bears evidence that several Indian youth who are trained in bomb making are still running free. This SIMI network also had contacts with Bilal’s HuJI operations. This deadly combination of foreign and domestic preachers of violence is continuing to carry out multiple blasts.

“Many are in our custody, but there are some out there free,” says sources in the Karnataka police.  

They also believe that there are links between a bomb blast in Hubli last Saturday in a closed courtroom, the Jaipur attacks, and the other recent terror strikes. Seven recently arrested terror suspects were to be produced in the Hubli court two days later, and advocates there had protested against a lawyer who took up brief on behalf of the terror accused. “It was a warning attack,” says a police source.

Sources also believe that those behind this Hubli attack and the ones behind the Jaipur blasts are part of the larger network of HuJILeT operating in tandem with a small group of Indians, especially a violence-preaching faction of the SIMI.

As India puts a new face to the terror strikes, intelligence sources are scrambling for details on Amjad. His name first figured in 2005, when a suicide terrorist carried out a daring raid on the headquarters of a special task force of the Andhra police.

In New Delhi, minister of state for home affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal said there was no breakthrough yet, but “there is a linkage between Jaipur blasts and incidents that took place in Ajmer, Varanasi, Faizabad, Hyderabad. The pattern is the same, modus operandi is the same, of selecting religious places and creating communal tension.” He blamed it on groups from Pakistan.