Three held in Kashmir over Delhi court blast

Agencies/New Delhi

Rishabh and Damini, the son and daughter of schoolteacher A K Sharma break down in tears as they wait to receive his body from a mortuary at a hospital in New Delhi after his death in the bomb blast

Police yesterday detained three people in Kashmir for questioning, including the owner of an Internet cafe, over an e-mail allegedly claiming responsibility for a bombing that killed 12 people in New Delhi, police sources said. The owner, his brother and an employee of the Global Cyber Cafe in Kishtwar in Kashmir, were taken in for questioning over an e-mail allegedly linked to a powerful bomb that exploded at the entrance of the Delhi High Court on Wednesday. The authorities are probing the authenticity of an e-mail claiming to be from the militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HUJI) and sent from the Internet cafe. The militant group, affiliated with Al Qaeda and largely based in Pakistan but also with bases in Bangladesh, has claimed responsibility for attacks in India, but not in recent years. Media outlets said an e-mail purportedly from the Indian Mujahideen, a home-grown radical group said to have support from Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, had also claimed responsibility for the briefcase bomb attack. The e-mail threatened to blow up a shopping mall next Tuesday. A top home ministry official told reporters that authorities had been informed of the mail and were investigating its authenticity. New Delhi and Islamabad are just rebuilding ties after peace talks were broken off following the attacks on Mumbai in 2008 when Pakistani militants rampaged through the city, leaving 166 dead. Any possible links between yesterday’s blast and Pakistan could burden the fragile process. The government has been sharply criticised for failing to put in place sufficient security measures at such a high-profile location as the high court of the Indian capital, especially as the blast came only days before the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh conceded yesterday militants were exploiting weaknesses in India’s security apparatus. Security sources in Kashmir, who declined to be identified, have raised doubts about whether HUJI was behind the bomb, saying the group had not been active in the region for some time and would not have used an Internet cafe to send a claim of responsibility. Several militant groups have been fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir for years. Ilyas Kashmiri, who US authorities believe was recently killed in Pakistan, was the head of HUJI and a senior Al Qaeda member. Indians woke up to pictures of mangled and bloodied bodies on the front pages of newspapers yesterday. The public mood against the government, already soured by months of anti-corruption protests, again worsened as crowds jeered ruling Congress Party members attempting to meet the victims. Police released sketches of two men with short beards who were suspects in the attack. The government issued a reward for any information related to the blast.    The Delhi High Court was also bombed in May, but caused no injuries. There were no CCTV cameras at the court and hand-held security scanners were not working, lawyers working there said. With some experts suggesting the May attack had been a dry run for Wednesday’s blast, a number of editorials in the press questioned why security at the court had not been tightened. “With cars spilling out of the car park and no security check worth its name installed, it was a veritable invitation for anyone seeking to perpetrate violence,” said the Hindustan Times. “The excuse of ‘not being able to prevent every attack’ is wearing perilously thin,” the newspaper said. Highlighting the fact that no blast case in the last two years has been solved, The Times of India said it was “truly shocking” that the court could have been successfully targeted twice in such a brief space of time. “This speaks of an extraordinarily lax security culture,” the Times said. In an e-mail to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), allegedly from the militant group, it called on India to repeal the death sentence of Mohamed Afzal Guru, convicted in connection with an attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 and warned it would otherwise target major courts in the country. The house of another suspected member of HUJI, linked to an attack in Varanasi five years ago, was raided on Wednesday, though local police said the raid was unrelated to the Delhi court blast. Home Minister P Chidambaram held a high-level meeting yesterday at which National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon was also present to take stock of the situation. The US, France, Britain and Pakistan all condemned the bombing, with Washington describing it as “cowardly”. The area around the Delhi High Court remained cordoned off as forensic teams picked through the rubble of the bomb that blew out a deep crater next to one of the court’s main entrances.