The Central Bureau of Investigation is hoping that the arrest of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker Devender Gupta, who was arrested in connection with the blast in Ajmer Dargah, might give key answers to the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad that occurred the same year.
The CBI, which is probing Hyderabad blast of May 18, 2007, had reportedly given up hope of cracking the case.
But after the arrest of Gupta by the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad, the CBI is looking at the case afresh as it allegedly suspects that Hindu militant organisations might be linked with the Hyderabad blast.
A CBI team had earlier gone to Nasik to question the accused in Malegaon blast case including Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Col Purohit on their links with Mecca Masjid incident.
According to CBI sources, a team will be sent to Rajasthan to question Gupta about the Hyderabad blast, which they said had many resemblances with the Ajmer blast.
CBI officials pointed out that in both the blasts mobile phones had been used to trigger the blast to target the crowded religious places of Muslims.
The blast in Mecca Masjid occurred during a Friday congregation and had killed 6 people.
A similar blast on October 11, 2007, during Ramadan had killed three people and injured 20 others in Ajmer.
Investigators noted that while one bomb had exploded, they had found another unexploded bomb at both blast sites.
Unused SIM cards were recovered from the scenes of both attacks. It was one such unused SIM card that led the investigators to Gupta.
The SIM card was purchased in Jharkhand just like the SIM card used in Hyderabad blast.
Sources said the CBI had suspected the involvement of the Hindu militant group Abhinav Bharat in the Hyderabad case after the Maharashtra ATS had arrested Sadhvi Pragya Thakur and Col Purohit and their accomplices.
Earlier, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram had said that all leads in Mecca Masjid blast probe had gone dry as the suspect (Shahed Bilal) was killed in Pakistan.
As in the Ajmer blast, the Hyderabad police had suspected the hand of organisations like Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jehad-e-Islami.
Shahed Bilal's name had been raised in this background.
Interestingly, sources said that the three men arrested in connection with the Hyderabad twin blasts case of August 2007 -- Akbar Ismail Choudhary, Aneeq Shafique and Ansar Ahmad Shaikh -- too had claimed that their motive behind the blast was to avenge the Masjid blast by militant Hindu organisations.
