Authorities close to solving Delhi High Court blast case
Indian police officials stand guard at the site of an explosion outside Delhi High Court in New Delhi on May 25, 2011. A low-intensity bomb exploded in a parking lot outside the busy Delhi High Court triggering panic, yet no injuries were reported, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI).
India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) has unraveled the plot behind this summer's bombing of the Delhi High Court, but it has yet to identify the two men who allegedly planted the briefcase bomb Sept. 7, the Indian Express reports.
The two suspects are currently known to the NIA only as "Bilal" and "Haroon," the paper said.
The paper cited anonymous sources as saying that the interrogation of the three people arrested by the NIA has investigators convinced that the plan was allegedly hatched in late June by Waseem Akram Malik, a Kishtwar, Jammu & Kashmir, resident studying medicine in Bangladesh. The motive behind the attack was apparently the scheduled execution of Afzal Guru, convicted for the 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament.
The three suspects interrogated by the NIA included Malik, Aamir Abbas and Aabid Hussain, the paper said.
A fourth-year student at Jalalabad Ragib-Rabeya Medical College, Sylhet, Bangladesh, Malik told interrogators Guru was his hero, the paper said. Sources said Malik was vague about how a bomb blast at the Delhi High Court would help Guru, and believes Guru is a political figure who dedicated his life for the “cause”.
Presumably, the cause Malik was referring to is the separatist movement in Indian-administered Kashmir, which was the ostensible motive for Guru's involvement in the 2001 parliament attack.