NEW DELHI After two weeks of the Delhi High Court blast, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is close to making the first formal announcement of a breakthrough in the case.
The NIA has already taken into custody three Kashmiri youths, including two schoolchildren, arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir police, earlier this week. Brought to Delhi on Wednesday, the NIA is likely to book them in the blast case. They will also be further interrogated.
All three accused -- Sharique Khawar Bhutt and Abid Hussain, both class XI students and Amir Abbas Dev, aged 30 years -- belong to the Kishtwar district in Jammu. While Dev was arrested by the J&K police on September 16, the other two -- Shariq and Hussain -- were arrested on September 13. They were arrested under the Information Technology Act for sending a terror e-mail from a cyber-cafe in Kishtwar.
The accused, however, have played a minor role in drafting and sending the e-mail that was received by several news channels.
The e-mail had claimed that the banned terror organisation HuJI (Harkat-ul-Jehadi-Islami) was responsible for carrying out the blast.
The e-mail had said: “We own responsibility of the blast at the High Court, Delhi. Our demand is that Afzal Guru’s death sentence should be repealed immediately as we would target major High Courts and the Supreme Court of India.”
But under pressure to crack the casr, the NIA is likely to charge them under Section 120 B (Criminal conspiracy) and under various other sections after producing them before the Delhi Court to take them on a police remand for interrogation.
According to NIA sources, their interrogation is likely to lead to the arrest of a few more people who were part of the module. The agency is already conducting raids and interrogation across the country, in states like UP, MP, Karnataka and Rajasthan to nab the main culprits.
Investigation by J&K police has revealed that Dev had handed over a draft mail to the other two accused three days before the blast with instruction to forward it on e-mails of the news channels. He is allegedly a former member of HuJI and had also worked with other linked organisations.
His interrogation is likely to lead to main accused who were actually involved in planning and execution of the blast.