Police defused 18 bombs found near the main diamond markets in the city of Surat and issued a sketch of a young man believed to be linked to one of two explosives-filled cars discovered there.
The announcement on Tuesday came as authorities in a Mumbai suburb probed ties to a series of blasts over the weekend that killed 42 people and wounded 183 in Ahmadabad, about 280km north of Surat. An obscure Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for the Ahmadabad attack.
“I request you not to go to crowded places unnecessarily,” Surat Police Commissioner R.M.S. Brar told the public during a news conference, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
Authorities said four cars — two used in Saturday’s Ahmadabad attack and the two found in Surat on Tuesday — were stolen this month from a Mumbai suburb, Navi Mumbai.
“Once we find the people who stole the cars, it will give us further clues about the blasts,” Navi Mumbai police chief Ramrao Wagh said.
Police said they believe the bombers used Navi Mumbai as the headquarters to plan the attack because they believed their activities would likely go undetected in the nondescript suburb.
India has been hit repeatedly by bombings in recent years. Nearly all have been blamed on Islamic rebels, who allegedly want to provoke violence between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority, although officials rarely offer hard evidence implicating specific groups.
Meanwhile, in the neighboring state of Rajasthan, police defused three crude bombs hidden inside plastic containers in a village about 300km north of Jaipur, said Harilal Sharma, a senior police official.
The latest developments come just days after 22 bombs tore through the historic city of Ahmadabad in Gujarat state in western India on Saturday.
The death toll has been lowered to 42 from 45 because several cases were reported twice amid the confusion, said H.P. Singh, a senior Ahmadabad police officer.
Authorities were also investigating on Tuesday the computer of a 48-year-old US citizen living in Mumbai to find out if an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack was sent from it, or if unknown attackers accessed his wireless Internet connection.
Police seized Kenneth Haywood’s computer on Monday after tracing an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack to the machine.
Police said on Tuesday that Haywood was not a suspect and it appeared the bombers had accessed his wireless network connection to send the e-mail.
Singh said anyone on the two floors below Haywood’s 15th floor apartment could have accessed his network.
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