Four suspects detained in Bodh Gaya blasts Evidence suggests terrorists entered the Buddhist shrine at night Patna: Four people were detained Tuesday in Patna and interrogated by the NIA in connection with the serial bomb explosions at Bodh Gaya’s Mahabodhi temple in Bihar, police officials said. The investigators narrowed down on the suspects using the CCTV footage of 16 cameras at the temple. “Four people, suspected to be involved in the serial bomb blasts in Bodh Gaya, were detained in Patna,” said a Bihar police official, who did not wish to be named. According to police officials, the suspects were taken to an undisclosed place for interrogation by a National Investigation Agency (NIA) team. They were among the six people spotted in the footage and suspected to be involved in the Sunday bombings in which two people were injured, he said. Evidence collected by the investigating agencies probing the serial blasts at Bodh Gaya has suggested the terrorists chose night hours to plant bombs inside the temple premises. It also appears one of the six suspects was a woman. Probe agencies got major leads while scanning the video footage of 16 CCTV cameras which were installed in the Mahabodhi Temple complex soon after the intelligences agencies issued the terror alert. In the video footage, the agencies detected the suspicious movements of some six strangers, including a woman, in the early hours of Sunday when the serial blasts took place. The details of their movements captured in the camera say the suspects riding a Tata Indica car and an auto-rickshaw had reached the temple in two groups shortly after midnight. In the footage, the suspects carrying bags on their shoulders and a few of them covering their face with turbans are seen passing messages through gestures. The time recorded for their arrivals at the temple in the CCTV cameras shows 1am and 3.20am, some two hours before the serial blasts rocked the Mahabodhi temple, one of the holiest shrines for Buddhists. The poor quality of visuals, however, is troubling the investigating teams who are trying hard to unravel the mystery by watching repeated replays. “The footage shows that three persons entered the premises through unspecified entry points while two others stood near the gate close to the car they came in. One of them, the tallest one, carried a bag on his shoulder and they are talking through gestures. Now, all the footages are being scanned for further clues,” an investigating agency official said Tuesday. The investigating agencies are also looking for six other men who mysteriously vanished from the area weeks before the blast took place. These people had been working at Buddhist pilgrim town and around the Buddhist shrine for the past six months. Acting on information provided by the Bodh Gaya Temple Management Committee which looks after the Buddhist shrine, the police have now issued a lookout notice for these persons and are verifying their backgrounds. The state government, in the meantime, has decided to hand over the temple security to the elite Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) saying it would request the Centre to deploy the force in the internal security of the temple. The government said it was already ready to bear all costs of the CISF but denied it was security lapse. CISF is responsible for providing security at all Indian airports. “Terror attacks can happen anywhere in the country and nobody can give a guarantee that they can be nipped in the bud,” Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar told the media on the sidelines of his weekly people’s court on Monday.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 03:03:18 +0000
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