new delhi: A day after an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was recovered from Delhi's old Seemapuri area on Thursday, Delhi Police Commissioner Rakesh Asthana said he suspected 'local support' behind the string of IEDs found in the city in the last month - which he said were being prepared with the intent to carry out blasts in highly-populated areas.
Talking to the press on Friday, Commissioner Asthana said, "Such types of activities are not possible without local support."
The police chief said that the IED recovered and defused before Republic Day from the Ghazipur flower market was similar to the one found in Old Seemapuri on Thursday and this was meant to "create a blast in a highly-populated area".
"We are trying our best to break the local and international network, this has links with the module busted by us," he said, adding that the Special Cell of the Delhi Police and other teams are now probing the forward and backward linkages of the case.
"We are trying to pre-empt every such incident in Delhi and expose any local and foreign network," Asthana said.
Sources said that police see a connection between such cases of not only Delhi but to Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. In fact, during the investigation of East Delhi's Ghazipur flower mandi case, the city police received local information from the Seemapuri area of suspicious activities.
However, there is no confirmation from Delhi Police or the investigation team yet. Significantly, the UP Police ATS had also reached House number D-49 in Old Seemapuri, from where the IED was recovered on Thursday.
Officials in the know said that the investigating team of the Special Cell is scanning the footage of more than 700 CCTVs installed in the nearby area to identify the suspected terrorists.
The police have revealed that around 400 people were vacated from nearby buildings after the "suspicious" bag was found in the Seemapuri house, a tip-off for which was left with the police team probing the Ghazipur IED case.
"We have stepped up the security in the area. We have put up barricades and sealed the house. The crime scene has been preserved," the police added.