INDIA has for the first time linked last month’s triple bomb blasts that killed 26 people in Mumbai to a home-grown militant group.
Home minister P Chidambaram told parliament yesterday that even though a police investigation into the case was still ongoing “all indications point to (an) Indian module”.
“We cannot live in denial. We cannot close our eyes to facts. There are home-grown modules,” he told the upper house of parliament the Rajya Sabha in a debate.
No one has claimed responsibility for the July 13 rush-hour bombings that ripped through the Opera House diamond trading hub, Zaveri Bazaar gold and jewellery quarter and the suburban district of Dadar.
But suspicion has fallen on the Indian Mujahideen, a shadowy group of domestic militants that have carried out similar attacks in the past, including New Delhi and Ahmedabad in 2008.
They were also thought to be behind a restaurant bombing in Pune in February 2010 that killed 16.
The Indian Mujahideen is believed to have links with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).
Chidambaram told lawmakers that India was not exempt from the rise of militant forces across the world, as opposition leaders accused the minister of being soft on extremism.
He accepted that domestic extremists threatened the country’s unity and recognised that the Pune blast in 2010 and the latest attack in Mumbai were “two major blots” on the counter-terrorism fight.
