2 suspects arrested in Mumbai bombings

NEW DELHI, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Two suspects have been arrested in three bombings that killed 27 people in Mumbai in July, Indian anti-terrorism police announced Monday.

The suspects, both in their 20s, had been "indoctrinated" into a terror plot targeting commercial areas of Mumbai, officer Rakesh Maria, who heads Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad, said at a news conference.

He identified the men as Naqi Ahmed Wasi Ahmed Sheikh and Nadeem Akhtar Ashfaq Sheikh, both natives of the eastern state of Bihar, one of the more poverty-stricken regions of India, CNN reported.

The July 13 bomb blasts came within minutes of one another at three busy Mumbai marketplaces. Evidence suggests the terrorists used ammonium nitrate in explosives, with a timing device to detonate them.

Authorities were still searching for three other people, including the alleged planner of the bombings, Yasin Bhatkal. Maria released a photograph of Bhatkal, believed to be an operative of the Indian mujahedin, which the United States designated a foreign terrorist organization last year.

Maria said investigators had tracked a money trail in the bombings and are seeking custody of a man already under arrest on suspicion of a forged currency offense.

The U.S. State Department, in a September statement, said the Indian mujahedin group sought to "to carry out terrorist actions against non-Muslims in furtherance of its ultimate objective -- an Islamic caliphate across South Asia."

The Indian mujahedin also played a "facilitative role" in coordinated November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai that killed 160 people in hotels, hospitals and railway stations, the State Department said.

The department also blamed the Indian mujahedin for 16 synchronized bombings in 2008 in Ahmedabad that killed 38 people and wounded 100 others and for the 2010 bombing of a bakery in Pune, India, that killed 17 people.