India blames homegrown terror cell for Mumbai blasts

India's home minister said for the first time that a homegrown terror cell was to blame for the most recent serial blasts in Mumbai, India's Hindu newspaper reports.

Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters that were indications of involvement of Indian module in the July 13 Mumbai blasts that killed 26 people.

He also said that India faces terrorist threats from right wing extremist groups, not only Islamist fanatics.

“While no conclusion has been reached, all indications point to Indian module,” Mr. Chidambaram said about the Mumbai blasts, adding that perhaps it could be the same module that carried out a blast in the German Bakery in Pune last year.

“We cannot live in denial. We cannot close our eyes to facts. There are home-grown modules. They do not belong to one religion,” the Hindu quoted Chidambaram as saying.

Indian government officials and Congress Party members like general secretary Digvijay Singh have been increasingly vocal about the presence of terrorist cells with links to Hindu extremist groups over the past four or five years, following a series of bomb blasts at mosques and other Muslim centers.  

Recently, Swami Aseemanand, accused in one of the bombings, indicated in his confession that several members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — a Hindu nationalist group with as many as a million members — were involved in the bombings of several mosques and a cross-border train carrying many citizens of Pakistan.

Because the Congress emphasizes India's secular multiculturalism and its biggest rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, espouses a Hindu nationalist ideology and draws support from the RSS, there is a strong political dimension to the discourse.