Manmohan visits bomb victims in Assam
Premier Manmohan Singh arrived yesterday in India's insurgency-wracked northeast to console those wounded in serial blasts claimed by a little known Islamist group in which 77 people were killed.
Singh, accompanied by ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, touched down in Assam state's main city, Guwahati as police said they had arrested three people in connection with Thursday's attacks.
Those held included a Muslim man, identified as Nazir Ahmed, whose mobile phone was used to send a text message in which the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for the bombings, police said.
The group is believed to have come into existence in 2000 in western Assam, where tribal Bodo militants are campaigning against Muslim settlers from nearby Bangladesh.
In the past two decades, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency-linked violence in tea- and oil-rich Assam.
The other suspects were detained because their vehicles -- a car and a motorcycle -- were used in the bombings, senior police official Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta said.
The bombs were packed with a powerful mixture of ammonium nitrate, plastic and military grade explosives, he said, and placed in congested areas.
Six explosions in Guwahati claimed 45 lives. Six other bombs that ripped through parts of Kokrajhar, Barpeta and Bongaigaon districts killed 32 people.
"We've got other vital leads and will be able to crack down on the masterminds very soon," Mahanta said.
Soon after his arrival, Singh, who represents Assam state in the upper house of India's parliament, visited some of the 300 injured.
He was also slated to visit some of the blast sites and chair a security meeting before returning to New Delhi.
His arrival in Guwahati coincided with a 12-hour shutdown called by the opposition Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party and two affiliated right-wing groups to protest against the state government's failure to clamp down on attacks.
Shops and businesses were closed while cars were off the roads.
But for those who lost loved ones in the bombings, the arrests and the protests were no consolation.
Rahima Begum, who lost her husband Abdul Ahmed, a Guwahati vegetable vendor, was grief-stricken and fearful of how she would manage in the future.
"I don't know how I am going to feed my three little children," she said with tears streaming down her cheeks as she sat outside her house in a city slum.
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