The Central Bureau of Investigation's probe in the Mecca Masjid blast case has brought yet another blunder by the Hyderabad city police to the fore.
The CBI's efforts to trace the source of the explosives found at the masjid has suffered a setback, as the Hyderabad police has reportedly destroyed the explosives recovered from the unexploded bomb recovered from the mosque courtyard.
This came to light when the CBI wrote a letter to the Andhra Pradesh Forensic Science Laboratory seeking samples of the recovered explosives to find out where the manufacture and other related details of the bomb.
However, the APFSL, in its letter dated June 9, informed the CBI that all the samples it had received from the Hyderabad police had been destroyed while the police destroyed the remaining explosives in its custody for 'safety'.
The APFSL's analysis had revealed that the unexploded bomb had 300 grams of Cycloto, a mixture of RDX and TNT.
While RDX made up 90 percent of the bomb, the rest was TNT -- a mix normally used only by army experts.
The CBI had planned to send the samples to the Defence Research and Development Organisation, which has the necessary know how to identify an explosive's manufacture, to identify the source of supply and the people who procured it.
APFSL sources defended the act saying storing the explosives in the laboratory would have been dangerous, as an explosion in 1994 had destroyed the laboratory building.
However, the CBI said it was confident of identifying the source as it still had a few leads -- since the explosives found at the Mecca masjid were similar to the one used in the Ajmer blast, the CBI plans to send the Ajmer sample to the DRDO for chemical fingerprinting.
Like in the case of Mecca masjid, terrorists had planted two bombs in Ajmer Dargah of ehich only one had exploded.
Questions have been raised on why the Hyderabad city police had failed to follow the leads offered by the unexploded bomb like the SIM card, cellphone, and other material used in the bomb.
The CBI has arrested two members of a Hindu extremist group, Devender Gupta and Lokesh Sharma, in the Mecca masjid and Ajmer blasts case.
