‘What exactly was Reza up to there?’

‘Abu-Lakhvi had asked him to verify details about Rohit and Sahil – if they actually run a cyber café, if they live at the address that they had provided to the LeT. The recruits are under the scanner, and it does not look good. Reza said the LeT has been suffering losses and failures, and they are checking for breaches.’

‘Understood, sir. I will tell Anant and Rohit to be careful and to do whatever they can to avoid walking into the lion’s den,’ Somaiya reassured his boss.

55. A SERIES OF BOMBINGS

55

A SERIES OF BOMBINGS

The stone courtyards and steps encircling the old Hanuman temple at Dashashwamedh Ghat by the river Ganga in Uttar Pradesh’s Varanasi were packed to the brim with devotees. It was around 4 p.m. on a February evening in 2005.

Dashashwamedh is among the eighty-four such ghats along a seven-kilometre stretch on the banks of the Ganga. It comes alive before sundown, with the Ganga aarti being performed by young pundits dressed in saffron every evening. The aarti is marked by the chanting of hymns in Sanskrit, the sight of flaming lamps and the smell of sandalwood and ghee, making for a mesmerizing experience for visitors and devotees.

On this particular evening, as the Vedic chants rang out over the water, two booming explosions rattled the surroundings, followed by shrieks, wailing and panicked voices.

The police initially attributed the explosions to the accidental bursting of a liquefied petroleum gas cylinder in an adjacent tea kiosk. Subsequent forensic findings, however, indicated that the blast was caused by IEDs. It was suspected that the IEDs were made of ammonium nitrate and iron nails. Two bombs, packed in aluminium containers, had been clandestinely planted by the perpetrators. The police later changed their stand and called it a ‘terror strike’. They suspected the involvement of the LeT, though they had no hard evidence to confirm this.

A few weeks later, there was another terror incident in Uttar Pradesh. Twelve people were killed and dozens injured when a blast ripped apart a coach of the Shramjeevi Express near Jaunpur railway station. Forensic tests indicated the use of military-grade RDX in the bomb, which was hidden in the compartment’s toilet.

According to eyewitness accounts reported in the media, two young men had boarded the train at Jaunpur with a white suitcase and leapt off shortly thereafter without it. The explosion had followed soon. The media reported that the police had no definite leads, though they were investigating the involvement of the LeT and Bangladesh’s Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI), which had a following in certain pockets of Bangladesh.

Two days before Diwali in October 2005, blasts tore through the shopping precincts of Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar in Delhi and in a bus at Govindpuri in south Delhi. The blasts killed sixty-two people and injured at least 210. Investigators suspected that pressure-cooker bombs had been used in Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar, and a tiffin-bomb in Govindpuri.