HYDERABAD: Even as the Assam police are yet to conclude whether the October 30 serial blasts were carried out jointly by the ULFA and the Islamic terror group, Harkat-Ul-Jihad-Aal-Islami (HUJI), usage of ABCD switches in the Programmable Electronic Timer Device (PETD) in the explosive devices has left the investigators baffled.
Pakistan is the largest manufacturer of the ABCD switches, popularly known as ABCD timers, and it has been found that most of the terrorists operating in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and Afghanistan have been using them quite often.
Using these timers, time can be set for as long as six months for the blast. In all the explosions, explosives were placed in the dicky of the stolen cars.
Sources in the Intelligence Bureau (IB), who received information about usage of this device (in the Assam serial blasts) from the forensic experts in Guhawati today, disclosed to `Express’ that these switches were being regularly used by terrorists operating in J&K and Afghanistan.
``In fact, arrests of the militants in J&K in the last few years had led to the recovery of ABCD switches in large quantities besides RDX and other material,’’ sources said.
Interestingly, while PETD were used in the blasts that rocked Surat and Bangalore earlier, sources said the highly sophisticated ABCD switches were not used in them.
``Assam has witnessed many bomb blasts by the ULFA earlier but never have we come across the switches being used by them. Further, they do not have the expertise to prepare such sophisticated bombs,’’ a senior police official from Assam said.
Now that it has been confirmed that ABCD switches were used in the bomb triggering mechanism, the official said the role of Islamic terrorists is slowly coming to the fore. ``Officials in New Delhi have been informed about this development,’’ he said.
Another interesting aspect, officials pointed out, was the use of ammonium nitrate in the explosives. ``Though RDX has been used in the blasts here earlier, this is the first time that a mixture of RDX and ammonium nitrate was used. Moreover, ULFA was always known to target security forces or the migrant population but never the general public,’’ officials observed.
The deadly serial blasts in Guhawati and other places in Aassam left over 90 dead and over 300 injured.