Suspects were in Dilsukhnagar hotel 10 days before blasts

Even as the Hyderabad police struggle to find vital clues into the twin blasts that rocked Hyderabad on Thursday, they have found that the accused persons had booked themselves in a hotel at Dilsukhnagar and had stayed there for over 10 days. Vicky Nanjappa reports.

Officials say that the five people had booked themselves into two rooms at a hotel in the Dilsukhnagar area and were staying there since the past 10 days.

"We have gone through the registers of all the hotels in the area and found that five persons had checked in 10 days before the blasts. We have scanned through all the records, and find that there are no proper details regarding these five persons," a police official told rediff.com.

Two rooms -- 302 and 303 had been booked under the names of Vijay, Sajid, Raju, Subhani and Akthar. Although the five persons stayed in these two rooms, they had been booked under the names of Subhani and Raju who had presented fake identification cards.

The cards that were produced were voter identification cards bearing an address from Muralaguda in the Nalgonda district, Andhra Pradesh.

The police, while verifying the CCTV footage taken from the hotel have found that these persons were moving around together in the hotel since the past ten days. However at the time of the blasts only three of them were out of the hotel, while Raju and Subhani remained in their rooms.

All the five persons vacated the hotels without informing the management a couple of hours before the blasts.

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Meanwhile the police is questioning 40 youths who were once accused in the Mecca Masjid blasts. Despite protests from civil rights groups the Special Investigation Team of the Hyderabad police rounded up several youths and questioned them.

"There has been a lot of disgruntlement among several youths who believe they have been falsely accused in the Mecca Masjid blasts case, and hence we believe that some of them could have aided the Indian Mujahideen in carrying out this attack," an officer involved in the investigation told rediff.com.

Investigators are looking into all possible angles, and now say that IM modules from other parts of the country could have orchestrated this attack.

While the Hyderabad police, which has formed six special teams is looking into every possible angle in the state connected to this attack, the National Investigation Agency on the other hand is questioning the various operatives arrested in several parts of the country.

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There appears to be a lot of confusion over the investigation as the NIA has still not begun a proper investigation in Hyderabad.

The NIA has written to the Andhra Pradesh government to hand over the probe entirely to them. The letter written by the NIA reads, "As discussed earlier, the case should be handed over to the NIA."

An official in the Hyderabad police says that the NIA should join the probe and not insist that it investigates the matter on its own.

"It is essential that the local police is part of this probe as we need information too. It is us who have to build on the leads and find out the modules as we need to maintain the law and order situation in future," said a police official.

An NIA official however pointed out that the local police should assist the probe instead of leading it, since it has a national perspective to it and only the NIA has the jurisdiction to probe the case anywhere in the country.

"This sort of confusion will only hurt the probe," the official also added.

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