Ahmedabad, July 25: The Gujarat police are now tracking a mobile number provided by the Mumbai police in connection with the recent serial blasts in the business capital of India.
Mumbai cops had gone through all phone calls made from three spots where the blasts took place.
“A total of 800 calls were followed through as suspicious in nature. Of these five remained untraceable till date. In the first phase of probe by Mumbai police, the bomb planters may not have used any mobile phones. However, there are some suspicious calls missing in the phone records that the cops are yet unable to explain,” said Gujarat police officials.
The five cellphone numbers were isolated by the Mumbai police since there were numerous calls made to these particular numbers at the blast sites. These calls were made from sim cards bought from Ahmedabad, Varanasi and Rajasthan, said the police.
All the calls, said police sources, were traced to Crawford Bazaar, which not only houses headquarters of Mumbai police but also is quite notorious for proliferation of the city’s underworld. The phone calls have led the cops to believe that D-gang members might have been used as bomb planters. “However, neither the receivers of the phone calls or the call makers could be traced. When the cops traced these mobile phones, they found that all the five mobile numbers were bought using forged documents,” said Gujarat police sources.
Based on this tip-off, Gujarat police have started looking for those who procured the sim card from the city. “The first task before us is to track down the shop which sold this mobile phone connection. Once this is achieved we shall scrutinize the documents which were used to purchase the sim card. Time and again shop owners have been asked to cross-verify credentials but not to much avail,” said officials of Gujarat police who are probing the case.
The Gujarat police have also been asked by their Mumbai counterparts to keep an eye out for the two masterminds of these serial blasts – Riyaz and Iqbal Batkal. “According to intelligence inputs received by the Mumbai police, the Batkal brothers were in Mumbai before July 13. The possibility that Batkal brothers might still be hiding in the country has Gujarat police on their toes,” said police sources.
–Agencies