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The significant headway came three days after the triple explosions rocked the maximum city. TheMaharashtra anti-terrorist squad chief Rakesh Maria, on Saturday claimed good leads and said that based on CCTV footage the investigators had identified one of the suspects. Without clarifying if it was the same man who was identified in the CCTV footage, Maria said that with the help of eyewitness accounts a sketch of the suspect was being prepared. He said the sketch will not be made public as it could hamper probe.
The sleuths were basing their neighbourhood safe house theory on forensic evidence which has revealed that the sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IED) would have been highly unstable to be carried long distances.
"These were assembled near the places where the bombs went off. We are going by this theory because forensic evidence has revealed a mixture of TNT, RDX, ammonium nitrate and petroleum oil. This concoction could have gone off in transit if assembled at some distant place because of the dangerously unstable mixture," Maria said. "They couldn't have been brought in crowded local trains or buses and even taxis would be a risk because of Mumbai's potholed roads," he added.
Two of the three blast sites - Zaveri Bazar and Opera House - are separated by a little over a kilometre, and Dadar, the third site, is about 12 km away. That means, if a "safe house" was used, it could be close to or around Zaveri Bazar or Opera House, the source said.
"The ones who built the bomb wouldn't have taken the risk of blowing them up, hence they must have assembled it near the three places where the bomb was planted," he added.
The theory also has come in to play because police believe that an extensive recce was done before planting the bombs and it would have helped if the men were staying somewhere in the vicinity of the targeted localities.
Since the bombs went off one after another at different places within a gap of minutes, investigators believe there were three different modules which could have stayed at the three different locations and then planted bombs in a coordinated way.
Investigators were now checking places near Dadar, Zaveri Bazar and Opera House to see if any unknown person had rented out flats there.
ATS teams have been sent to West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka to look for possible links. UP is especially significant as the earlier module of Indian Mujahideen which was busted hailed from Azamgarh.
ATS officers believe UP is also important because Amir Reza Khan, who is alleged to be behind several bomb blasts in the country, has a girlfriend living in that state. According to ATS officials, the girl had actively helped Reza in carrying out terror activities. The police, however, were yet to trace the girl. Officials said the girl was not only involved in helping IM members find accommodation but also in ferrying them outside the country.
Talking to the media on Saturday, the ATS chief Rakesh Maria formally ruled out the suicide bomber theory. Maria said Gujarat and Delhi Police have sent their teams to Mumbai to assist in the probe.
Maria said they had been able to identify a suspect from one of the CCTV cameras but refused to divulge his name. The ATS chief also said that based on eye-witness accounts they are also going to make a sketch of one of the suspects but will not release it to the public as it could impede investigations. The sketch would be circulated only among police officers.
"Going through the CCTV images at all the three sites is a voluminous job as each frame has many persons in it. We do have one image that has been captured in one of the CCTV cameras and we are verifying and trying to identify the person," said Maria, without specifying from which location they have identified this person. Unlike previous instances there were CCTV cameras at all the locations where bombs went off this time.
Maria claimed that they had found that ammonium nitrate, fuel oil and digital timers used in the blasts. He added that the bombs were placed in small metallic containers. He was non- committal over whether they were metallic containers or tiffin boxes.
According to Maria, the containers were totally destroyed in the blasts and they were waiting for the forensic report.
Refusing to reveal which group was behind the blasts, Maria said, "Till the case is detected and we catch the culprits, we would not like to comment about which group is responsible."
What may, however, impede the investigations is the absence of a law making tenant verification in Mumbai mandatory. Although the had issues guidelines to house owners asking them to get their tenants verified before renting out their apartments, they are not serious about implementing the directives.
Even the guildelines are issued only once in a couple of years. The last time the issue caught the fancy of hte police was in 2008 when US national Kenneth Haywood's wi-fi connection was hacked by the Indian Mujahideen to send emails. A subsequent police investigation revealed that Haywood was staying without any police verification.
The Navi Mumbai police had then said that they would initiate action against all the landlords who did not inform them about their tenants. The drive fizzled out soon after.
Prior to the Haywood's case, the Mumbai police had arrested one Faisal Sheikh for his involvement in the 2006 serial blasts in the local trains. Police officers claimed that Faisal had rented a house in Bandra where the bombs were assembled.
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