Investigators probing the Feb 13 bombing on an Israeli embassy car are tracking a possible Bangladeshi terror link to the attack blamed by Israel on Iran, sources said Tuesday.
Highly placed intelligence and diplomatic sources said two calls were made to a cell phone in New Delhi from a suspected satellite phone in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar.
They said the cell phone, which received the satellite calls on the day of the blast and another a week earlier, has been switched off soon after the attack that injured four people, including a diplomat's wife.
The sources revealed to IANS that the satellite phone has been found to be in the possession of Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami (HuJI) operatives.
They said that the satellite phone was in the scanner of Indian intelligence agencies for long before a magnetic explosive device used to target the embassy car near Aurangzeb Road in the capital.
"The satellite phone is used to coordinate India operations by the HuJI, (Pakistan-based) Lashkar-e-Taiba and Indian Mujahideen," a sources privy to the investigation told IANS.
The sources said investigators were working on a theory that HuJI operatives would have used local terror modules to conduct the attack that Israel blamed on Iran.
The attack metres away from high secured zone of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's resident sent shockwaves in the security establishment with Israel blaming on Iran and West Asian militant groups including Hezbollah. Iran as well as Hezbollah have denied their involvement.
Intelligence sources said they had inputs that the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was restarting its anti-India terror front in Bangladesh.
The ISI is cashing on the growing voices against Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina who has come closer to India even as the two nations failed to sign a landmark water sharing deal when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was in Dhaka September 2011.
