Hunt on for Pune bomber: investigators

Pune: Investigators in the Pune bomb blast are looking for a person who was carrying a haversack and walked into a bakery unnoticed and planted what appears to be a concoction of RDX and ammonium nitrate.

The blast at the popular German Bakery killed nine people, injured 60 and shattered the 15-month lull after the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008. The Maharashtra police are cautious about fixing blame for the blast.

"Investigation is on. With the assistance of National Investigation Agency, the state's Anti-Terrorism Squad is probing the case and it is moving in the right direction," said Rashmi Shukla, Inspector General, Law and Order.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram, who visited Pune on Sunday, denied intelligence agencies had failed to warn of a terrorist attack. He said police had been sensitised about Osho Ashram and the Jewish Chabad House both of which are located near the bakery.

"So, this area is on the radar of terrorists. There is no intelligence failure, but please remember this is not an overt attack by gunmen. This an insidious bomb that had been planted in what appears to be a backpack," said Chidambaram.

He said it appears that a "person or more persons pretending as customers seem to have come to the German bakery and one of them might have left a backpack under a table" in the bakery.

The people behind the blast have not been established yet but Union Home Ministry sources tell CNN-IBN that investigators are relying on possible video evidence from a CCTV in a hotel situated opposite the German Bakery to see if anything suspicious was captured by the camera.

Three cities have now been put on high alert after the blast in Pune: Indore, a hotbed of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India, where BJP leaders meet for a three-day conclave; Kanpur, which has reported several accidents during the illegal manufacture of bombs, and New Delhi, a city always on the radar of terrorists.