Bomb Blast at Delhi High Court, 15 dead, many injured.

[Singh]

Injured battle for life as death toll goes up to 13
​

Two victims of the Delhi high court blast succumbed to their injuries at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital on Thursday, taking the death toll to 13. At least five of the 75 injured persons are battling for their lives at RML. Fifty-eight-year-old P Patra, who was recuperating in the resuscitation room of the hospital's trauma block and died of cardiac arrest around 7pm.
Pramod Kumar Chaurasia, 40, also breathed his last on Thursday morning.

He was a resident of Mubarakpur Road in west Delhi's Nangloi. He is survived by his wife and four children.

Chaurasia was brought to the hospital with multiple fractures and chest perforation.

"He was standing in the queue for the entry pass. I wish he had missed his hearing on Wednesday," said Shambhu Chaurasia, his brother, who was upset with the hospital authorities for not communicating with the family on his brother's failing health.

"Till yesterday, we were told that his surgery had gone well and he was stable. His sudden death has come as a rude jolt," he wept.

According to hospital sources, eight patients are undergoing reconstructive surgery, seven are trauma patients, five are in the intensive care unit, 12 in the surgical ward, 10 in the orthopaedic ward and 13 of the injured— who had come with fractures and minor splinter injuries — have been discharged.

"Most of the victims have injuries on the lower part of their bodies due to the impact of the blast. There were cases of calf and thigh lacerations, amputations, and compound fractures," said a doctor from department of surgery at RML Hospital on the condition of anonymity.

"My friend Vipin Gautam, 63, and I are petitioners in Public Interest Litigation against the DDA. While he was standing in the queue for a pass, I was filling a form 10 to 12 feet away from him. When the bomb blast happened, I ducked in fear and on gaining consciousness, I saw my friend lying under two dead bodies. On lifting him up, I saw both his legs mangled up," said Rahul Gupta, 51, an eyewitness to the blast.

Gautam was one of those who underwent reconstructive surgery. Another was Radhey Shyam, 60, who was brought to the hospital with one of his legs in his hands. "When he was brought into the hospital, he was unconscious, but his arms were wrapped around his severed leg," said a doctor, who was on emergency duty on Wednesday.

Injured battle for life as death toll goes up to 13 - Hindustan Times

 

[Singh]

Delhi blast: List of the 11 dead​

New Delhi: Names of the 11 people killed in the Delhi High Court bomb blast that were released by Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital:

Inder Singh, 75: A resident of Geeta Colony in East Delhi. Mr Singh had come to the high court with his son Maninder for a hearing.

Vinod Jaiswal, 55: Resident of Sarai Rohilla, North Delhi.

Vir Pal Singh, 50: Resident of Gandhi Nagar, East Delhi.


Mehtab Singh Dabas, 57: Resident of Ghewar village, Nangloi in West Delhi. Mr Dabas had come along with his son to the court for a hearing on civil dispute.
Nizamuddin, 85: Came from Meerut for the last hearing in a family feud. Mr Nizamuddin was accompanied by his grandson and two relatives, who were injured. Hospital authorities declared Nizamuddin "brought dead".

HD Joshi, 68: A resident of Naraina in west Delhi, he had come for a hearing on the case he had filed against the Municipal Corporation of Delhi for "non-development of Naraina industrial area". The deceased ran a footwear factory in West Delhi.

Amanpreet Singh Kohli, 21: A law student from west Delhi's Tilak Nigar, Mr Kohli left his home at around 9 a.m. with his driver. He was also declared "brought dead" to the hospital.

Darshan Lal Jain: A resident of Shakti Nagar, North Delhi.

Pawan Bansal, 52: No details.

Nalini Agarwal: Age unavailable. A resident of Vasant Vihar.

Ashok Kumar, 55: No details.

Delhi blast: List of the 11 dead

 

[Singh]

Some thoughts on the HuJI & IM emails, and the on-going investigation.
​

Investigation into the heinous attack on the Delhi High Court that left 11 dead and several injured has begun. At the center of this investigation are two emails alleged to have been sent by Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) and, subsequently, by the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

The email alleged to have been sent by HuJI was via Gmail. Based on this article by DNA, NIA and Delhi Police investigating the terrorist attack traced the email to a cybercafe in Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir. The owner of the cybercafe, Mehmood Khawja and two others are reportedly being questioned.

A couple of important points need to be noted about the ongoing investigation. First, Gmail is a free, web-based service provided by Google, whose mail servers reside in the U.S. As such, these mail servers and the data they contain are subject to U.S. law. In the event that the Government of India would need access to any of this information, it would need to make a formal request, justifying its need to access a third party's data, to Google via the U.S. government 1. If this has indeed happened and has resulted in India obtaining data pertinent to this email, then it bodes very well for the Indo-US counter-terror cooperation.

This is especially impressive, since Indian investigators were able to gain access to the alleged HuJI mail account within the span of 3 hours (the email was sent 3 hours after the blast and investigators had access to the account's password 3 hours subsequent to that, as indicated in DNA's account). Now, it is entirely also possible that Indian investigators were able to guess the account's password, but the gut feeling of this blogger is that the explanation provided by NIA and Delhi Police stretches credulity.

Next, Toral Varia, journalist with Rediff has a good comparative analysis of the emails sent by HuJI and IM to ones previously sent by these groups. The article points out discrepancies in typefacing and format — even spelling (the IM email misspelled mujahideen as "Muzahideen.") — from threats previously received from these groups. Therefore, it would appear that these emails were sent by people who may have not had prior knowledge about a pending attack on Delhi High Court.

It must be noted that Indian Mujahideen has sent as many as five emails claiming responsibilities for various attacks. All the emails were drafted with precision using PDF files, various fonts and colours, Urdu script, a proper signature, a well researched list of recipients, and sent minutes after a terror attack was executed. All the mails were signed by 'Al ARBI.'

Content for the Indian Mujahideen mails was usually written in impeccable English, interspersed with the verses from the holy Koran, a picture of the Gujarat carnage, references to 'atrocities on Muslims' amongst other inflammatory literature.

However, one look at both the emails, that have been sent claiming and counter claiming responsibilities for Wednesday's blast, and the first impression is that the mails have perhaps been sent by an amateur. [Rediff]

At the same time, it is also equally important to not discredit these leads based on prima facie evidence. Unfortunately, some TV news anchors are dismissing these emails as "prank emails." It would be dangerous to categorize them as such. Now, the fact the senders of the HuJI email were traced down as quickly as they apparently were leads us to believe that the senders weren't very technically adept.

Those who follow the modi operandi of jihadi groups know that the first rule that today's terrorist learns is cyber cover and concealment. This might possibly indicate that the senders of the email were either not very well trained, or not directly linked to the perpetrators of the attack. However, this shouldn't necessarily mean that these correspondences were "prank emails," as the entire purpose of the emails might have been to deliberately mislead investigators.

Finally, we must recognize that we must give investigators the time and space to fully and thoroughly investigate the attack. Delhi Police has been (quite fairly) criticized for not learning from the lessons of the past and not taking the necessary precautionary measures to deter the attack. We also know all too well that not one terror attack in India since 2005 has been resolved. But at the same time, let's not play judge, jury and executioner before we've given the NIA and DP the opportunity to investigate. In this regard, the media should take it upon itself to play a more constructive role.

1 Some readers have brought Google's "User Data Requirements" (LT vinay and @_g0nz0_) to my attention. It would appear that Google has established processes allowing governments to access private user data. Based on the language, it appears to be broad enough to access to email, without the involvement of the U.S. However, both GoI and Google would have to be astonishingly effective were the entire process, from request to receipt, accomplished within the span of 3 hours.

The Delhi terror trail | The Filter Coffee

 

[Singh]

Why Delhi blast mails seem to be bogus
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Two mails sent on two consecutive days by two different senders, both claiming responsibility for the blast outside Delhi high court that has claimed 12 lives so far, besides injuring more than 75 others. Toral Varia makes a comparative analysis of these mails and its effect on the investigations.

The first email from [email protected] arrived at 1.14 pm on Wednesday in the inboxes on two media houses -- NDTV and Headlines Today -- just hours after the blast.

The mail allegedly sent out by Harkat-ul-Jihadi Islami which claimed responsibility of the terror attack outside the Delhi High Court stated, "We owe responsibility of today's blast at high court Delhi... our demand is that Afzal Guru's death sentence should be repealed immediately else we target major high courts & the Supreme Court of IndiaÂ…"

Just when the National Investigations Agency sleuths were tracking the first email ID traced to a cyber café in Jammu and Kashmir , a second email is sent to Headlines Today on Thursday.

This time email is sent at 12.37 pm from one 'chotoo minani ayushman' using email id [email protected]. This mail tries to discredit the first email. It reads, "kal delhi me hue blast me huji ka haath ho hi nahi sakta hai. kyunkiuse hamne anjam diya. hamne pehle se yeh plan banaya tha ki wednesdayke din hi blast karna hai kyunki us din wahan sabse jyada crowd hotihai. ise hamne yani INDIAN MUZAHIDDIN NE ANJAM DIYA HAI. huji ka tohisme dur-dur tak koi wasta nahi hai. hamara agla taret jald hi ranglayega jo ek shopping complex ke bahar hoga. use koi nahi rok sakta.aur yeh agle tuesday ko hoga. rok sako toh rok lo.chotoo (chotu) member INDIAN MUZAHIDDIN"

After closer look at both the emails, one wonders if the investigators are being sent on a wild goose chase. Is this an attempt to enable the perpetrators to escape while the officers are busy concentrating on tracing the sender of the email?

Or are these emails mere pranks? Are the officials losing out on crucial time and leads in the investigation while concentrating on the emails?

"We are taking each email seriously. We are already working on tracking the email after it has been forwarded to us along with the headers," says Prakash Mishra, special director general of the National Investigations Agency.

Since the latest email has been sent by a 'chotoo minani ayushman' who claims to be a member of 'INDIAN MUZAHIDDIN,' a natural comparison with all the previous Indian Mujahideen [ Images ] mails is warranted.

It must be noted that Indian Mujahideen has sent as many as five emails claiming responsibilities for various attacks. All the emails were drafted with precision using PDF files, various fonts and colours, Urdu script, a proper signature, a well researched list of recipients, and sent minutes after a terror attack was executed. All the mails were signed by 'Al – ARBI.'

Content for the Indian Mujahideen mails was usually written in impeccable English, interspersed with the verses from the holy Koran, a picture of the Gujarat carnage, references to 'atrocities on Muslims' amongst other inflammatory literature.

However, one look at both the emails, that have been sent claiming and counter claiming responsibilities for Wednesday's blast, and the first impression is that the mails have perhaps been sent by an amateur.


A senior Mumbai crime branch official associated with the investigations into the previous blasts observes that, "This time around both the mails appear to be an afterthought almost bordering on pranks"

HuJI, which is not very active in India, is not really known to be sending emails to claim responsibility of an attack. And on the other hand, Indian Mujahideen has never written a mail that appears shabby in language and spelling.

Unlike the previous elaborate mails sent out by the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen, both the emails are short with two lines and four lines each.

The second mail especially has strikingly spelled "Indian Mujahideen' as 'INDIAN MUZAHIDDIN'. The sender has written a mail in roman Hindi which has never been Indian Mujahideen's style.

The content really appears to be plagiarised from national television news channels reporting on why the gates of Delhi high court are crowded on any given working Wednesday.

Indian Mujahideen is also never known to leave individual names as a sign off like 'chotoo' (Chotu) member of INDIAN MUZAHIDDIN.'

The sender's list as compared to that of the Indian Mujahideen is also very basic. While the first email was sent to just two media houses, the second was sent to only one. Indian Mujahideen mails have always been sent to a multiple print, television and international media houses.

The language in both the recent emails appears to be very layman like. The mails also differ in formatting, and fonts. The first email has no signature and makes a demand not to hang Parliament attack accused Afzal Guru.

Again on this front, Indian Mujahideen is known to seek revenge and never make any particular demands, while issuing threats to target other key locations.

Timing of the mails also gives credence to police's theory that the mails have been sent as an afterthought. Besides the mails appear to have been sent through stationary computers, which is totally different from hacking unsecured wifi networks and sending mails on the move.

Perhaps the senders are trying to ape the modus operandi adopted by the Indian Mujahideen. Investigators are also working on a conjecture that this is "perhaps because a number of blast cases executed by the IM have gone undetected so far," says an official from the NIA.

This also points to a possibility that the perhaps this is a separate group and will have to be investigated differently.

And while, home ministry and NIA officials confirm that they are taking each lead, including the terror mails, seriously, privately NIA officials believe that the mails may well turn out to be pranks. However, as of now, verification of facts in underway, even as speculations are rife.

Why Delhi blast mails seem to be bogus - Rediff.com India News

 

[Singh]

Reform Or Perish
​

The blast outside Delhi High Court at 10:16 AM today has claimed 11 lives and left 76 injured. An earlier attempt in May to explode a bomb there had failed as the detonator had caught fire, thereby leaving the high explosive intact.

One, it is an intelligence failure. Every single bomb blast, every single terror strike is an intelligence failure. Lack of intelligence means that either we are searching at the wrong places, or we are not reading the clues properly. There can be no excuses for this lack of intelligence after we have failed to progress on four recent incidents: Jama Masjid shooting, Pune Bakery blast, Varanasi blast and Mumbai blasts. But an acknowledgement of failure is not sufficient. The MHA needs to review the processes in place, perhaps even get in a few external consultants for Red-Gaming sessions, and start thinking afresh on its process of intelligence collection, collation and analysis.

Most people look at intelligence as finding out the perpetrators of the blasts and their cause. That is important but it is not as important as intercepting these terrorist modules and sleeper cells before the blast. The best way to prevent a blast is to neutralise the terrorist before he has built the bomb, not after he has placed it. CCTVs and Quick Reaction Emergency Teams are important but they don't prevent a blast. At best, they minimise its impact and help in post-blast investigations. Let us not confuse the two measures.

Two, it is a failure of the local police. Even though a similar blast had been averted in May by good fortune, the fact that they allowed another blast to occur at the same place, in the same manner, within a few months is inexcusable. There was no element of surprise in this, except if the local police was callous enough to assume that lightning wouldn't strike the same place twice. The capability of the local police, and their capacity to handle twenty-first century threats in a megalopolis like Delhi doesn't exist. It has been so for many years now, and despite much lip-service to police reforms in Delhi by the Union Home Minister, nothing much has been achieved.

Three, the claim by Harkat-ul Jihad al-Islami (if it is actually from HuJI) is of little value. In all likelihood, it is a Red Herring. The email making that claim should be enquired into thoroughly but that claim should not cloud our perceptions about who planted this bomb. As with other blasts in the last couple of years, no one has claimed the blasts and we still don't know why the blast was conducted. Terror is politics by violent means, and if we don't know even what the politics behind this bout of mindless terror is, how can the government address their political grievances?

If the blast was about the Afzal hanging case, then the answer is not hanging Afzal today evening itself at the site of the bomb blast. Let our anger not cloud our good sense of judgement. The failure for Indian criminal system to deliver quick justice is not a cause of the blast. It is merely an excuse being used by our enemies, which some of us are easily buying into.

Four, the post-blast investigation report telling us that it had traces of PETN means nothing to the average Indian. It is an attempt by the Home Ministry to depict that it is doing something after the blast. Let us not confuse activity for action. Every blast that uses High Explosives will have a detonator, and that detonator will contain PETN. Show me a blast which uses RDX or ANFO or any other High Explosive, and I will show you traces of PETN there. PETN can also be used as a booster to trigger the bomb. With the proliferation of jehadi manuals on the internet, there are no signature styles of bomb-making left anymore. Let the MHA not pass facts which are true but of little value, just to feed morsels to the hungry media. It should instead focus its energies on the real issues plaguing the system.

Five, the role of the media. In the vacuum of factual information — which will always happen after a blast — speculations, biased opinions and outrage move in rather quickly. It serves little purpose, and perhaps that is the way it is meant to be — fill some space and time with meaningless chatter, which must sound profound, revelatory and important nevertheless. The experts and analysts on the TV shows need to take a step back, review their own videos and they would then develop the courage to say, "It is too early to say anything. I don't know." This country deserves at least that much honesty from the media and the experts. They may not realise it now but it is a slippery slope that they are on.

Six, people are angry. They have a right to be angry. They believe that the Indian state is failing in its duty to protect their lives. Indians are in no mood to go back to the ugly days of regular terror strikes on the Indian mainland witnessed during the 15 years preceding 2008. The credibility of the Indian government has hit such a low that people now take offence when the government "condemns" a blast or asks people to display "resilience". The onus is upon the government to redeem itself. It is a challenge which must be overcome with political imagination. Agreeing to the opposition's suggestion to suspend the Lok Sabha for the day was a rather daft decision in these times of middle-class cynicism about politics and parliament. The political class in general, and the government in particular, is not sending the right message with its actions. The trust and confidence of the average Indian in the Indian state can not be allowed to wither away. It has long-term consequences.

Finally, there are no fool-proof methods or magical solutions to prevent terror strikes. Terrorists have to succeed only once whereas the security forces have to succeed always and every time. But that dictum cannot be used as an excuse to cover-up the kind of failure witnessed today. It is another wake-up call for the government of the day. Reform or perish.


www.outlookindia.com | Reform Or Perish

 

[JAYRAM]

Heard they used Proxy...

 

[Singh]

Another blast victim dies, toll rises to 15
​

New Delhi: A man injured in the Delhi High Court blast succumbed to injuries today, taking the death toll in the terror attack to 15.


58-year-old Rattan Lal died at 8:20 AM in the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. He was in a serious condition and both his legs had been amputated, doctors said.

He is survived by wife, three daughters and a son.

"Yesterday, he had expressed his desire to meet his wife and son and we had agreed," the doctor said.

Twenty-four victims of the blast are undergoing treatment in different city hospitals — 11 in RML, five in AIIMS, four in Safdarjung, two in Max and one each in Moolchand and LNJP.

The explosion outside Gate No 5 of the high court had left over 70 people injured, many of them seriously.

Another blast victim dies, toll rises to 15 | Firstpost

 

[ejazr]

Still no concrete update on the Delhi blasts, but the fact that there were no CCTV cameras is just in excusable especially since there had already been such blasts before.

What really infuriates me is how people can send hoax emails and phonecalls after such an act where the police has only hours to get on the trail and capture the culprits. Don't they realise that they are causing the police to trace their hoax emails and waste valuable time and resources rather than going after the real culprits while you make emails about "chootomiyan" and "INDIAN MUZZAHIDEEN".

There should a harsh laws for people who make hoax claims for terrorist acts like life imprisonment or something similar so that they are deterred from doing this again.

A recap of the fake emails

14-yr-old held for hoax IM e-mails
Kolkota
A 14-year-old from Pakur was arrested on the charge of sending mischievous e-mails to a news channel claiming responsibility for a Delhi High Court blast on Wednesday. The boy in the mail claimed to be from the terrorist outfit Indian Mujahideen.
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Kumar, however, confirmed that the boy had no relation to the outfit and had only played a prank. "After interrogating the boy it is clear that the e-mails that he sent were just mischief and he has no connection with terrorist outfit. He is not responsible for the Delhi High Court blast," Kumar said.

"The student sent the second and the fourth of the four mails received by the media houses through a Blackberry mobile using a SIM card of the Kolkata Circle, claiming that IM and not HuJI was responsible for the blasts," Kumar added.

The boy later provided the police with the e-mail id and password of the account from which the mails were sent. "We have retrieved mail he had sent from the sent items folder of the address," the ACP confirmed.

Truck driver in Pune arrested for hoax bomb call - Mumbai - DNA
The Pune Anti-Terrorist Cell (PATC) arrested a 39-year-old truck driver for allegedly making a hoax call to the Pune police control room an hour after Delhi high court blast on Wednesday, claiming there would be serial bomb blasts in various parts of Pune city.

The arrested suspect has been identified as Umesh Shankar Vatte, a resident of Tamhane Vasti in Chikhali.

After the call, the entire police force was pressed into action. PATC sleuths tried to trace the number, but it was not reachable.
After investigation, a team led by police inspector Sunil Tambe of PATC succeeded in arresting Vatte from Chikhali on Thursday night.

Tambe said, "The control room received a call at 11.15 am on Wednesday, exactly an hour after a bomb blast outside the Delhi high court. Vatte claimed that there would be serial bomb blasts in various parts of the city and immediately disconnected the phone.''
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"On Thursday night, we laid a trap near his house and arrested him. During sustained interrogation, he admitted that he had called just to have fun and wanted the police to be more alert after the blast,'' Tambe added.

And another from Gujarat

Youth arrested for sending hoax mail over Delhi blasts [newKerala.com News # 65453]
Ahmedabad, Sep 12 : City Crime Branch sleuths arrested a 23-year-old youth from Patan in North Gujarat for sending an hoax mail, purportedly in the name of Indian Mujahuddin and claiming responsibility of the bomb blast in Delhi last week and threatening a terror attack in the city.

Sudhir Sinha, Commissioner of Police, told mediapersons today that Monu Oza was arrested from Patan after the terror-mail written to media was traced to a laptop of Patan-based businessman Raju Yadav. Further inquiries revealed that Monu had used his friend's laptop and sent the mail in the name of Indian Mujahiddin.

Monu, who has studied upto class 11 and was workng as a data entry operater. He used the name of Al Saiyad Al Huri, a terrorist in FBI's wanted list in the mail. When he did not receive any response from the mail to media, he sent the mail to Delhi police who swung in action and the mail was traced to a computer in Patan.
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According to the provisions of Cyber crime act, Monu can get life imprisonment for the hoax which kept the police and the people on tenterhooks.

Seriously how stupid can you be when you do these things??

 

[JAYRAM]

Agencies are looking for one from kerala...

The Hindu : News / National : NIA probing Kerala link to Delhi blast

Delhi HC blast: Did Kerala module fund it? - Rediff.com News

 

[Mrugaja]

Really unacceptable. How long will the govt just go on giving excuses at the cost of so many innocent civilian lives.
click here for more info: Terrorism and Homeland Security

 

[sayareakd]

this shows the good work done by Delhi police