Bodh Gaya:
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the Bodh Gaya temple blasts, has detained three men and a woman, who are being questioned for suspicious movement.
Two days after multiple blasts ripped through the Mahabodhi temple in Bihar's Bodh Gaya town, injuring two people, no arrests have been made in the case yet.
Here are the 10 latest developments in the case:
The four people detained checked in a hotel, 200 metres from the Mahabodhi temple at 4 am and checked out at 6:30 am on Sunday. The multiple blasts took place shortly after 5 am. The hotel has shared the ids of the four people with the investigators.
The NIA, which was assisting the local police with the investigations till now, has taken over the probe after a request from the state government.
With no leads coming from the 15 CCTV cameras, sources say that it is possible that the attackers may have evaded those cameras.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is scheduled to visit the blasts site today. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Rajnath Singh and party leader Arun Jaitley visited the Mahabodhi temple yeterday. The BJP, while going soft on its former ally, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, slammed the Centre for failing to check the terror attack. (Read)
The Delhi Police had alerted the temple authorities in October last year about a possible terror attack by the Indian Mujahideen. The investigators, however, said they are also looking at other groups besides the Indian Mujahideen.
Investigators say they need more evidence before zeroing in on any one group. A bomb analysis report has revealed startling similarities between the Bodh Gaya explosions and the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts five years ago, allegedly carried out by the Indian Mujahideen.
The investigators in Bodh Gaya are checking the hotels around the holy site and preparing a list of all those who stayed in them in the last couple of days. They have also recovered CCTV footage from these hotels.
The NIA is also collecting telephone data from mobile towers in the area. Investigators say the analysis of the call records as well as the CCTV footage may take some time before they arrive at a credible lead into the probe.
The Bihar Police have detained a man named Vinod Mistry, whose identity card was found at the blast site. The Kolkata Police's special task force, which had also detained a man suspected of being an Indian Mujahideen operative, yesterday said he had no links with the Bodh Gaya blasts.
One of the bombs that ripped through the Bodh Gaya temple premises on early Sunday morning was placed 20 feet high on a statue of Gautam Buddha, forensic analysts said yesterday. (Read)
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