Muslims fear reprisals after Bombay bomb attacks

Muslims in Bombay feared reprisals today after the worst terror attack in the city for a decade killed 46 people and wounded 150.

Police said suspicions over the twin car bombings, which killed Hindus and Muslims alike, were focusing on Islamic extremist groups, some of them allegedly backed by Pakistan.

Pakistan immediately denounced the “wanton targeting of civilians”, but the blasts in India’s financial centre sparked fears of rising tensions just when relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours appeared to be on the mend.

Indian police and officials said they had no direct evidence of who carried out the bombings and no group immediately claimed responsibility.

“I can say it is a terrorist group, but which group, we cannot say,” said Kripa Shankar, the home minister of Bombay’s Maharashtra state.

Terrorist attacks in the past have triggered severe tit-for-tat sectarian violence, and Muslims in Bombay worried that they would be blamed by Hindus.

“There is a fear gripping the city,” Muslim community leader and businessman Sohail Rokadia said. Overnight, roads in several parts of the city – usually clogged with traffic – were deserted.

But the metropolis of 16 million people, India’s largest, appeared calm as daybreak brought the usual hectic activity.

Commuters crowded pedestrian crossings on their way to work. Schoolchildren were seen off by their parents and worshippers thronged the popular Siddhi Vinayak temple as part of Hindu

religious festivities that will climax on Sunday to honour the elephant god Ganesh.

The bombs in two taxis exploded minutes apart, ripping through a crowded jewellery market, the Zaveri Bazaar, and in front of a colonial-era tourist attraction, the Gateway of India.

The blasts shattered windows at the luxury Taj Mahal hotel facing the gateway on the sea-front, and several other buildings.

Many people were being interrogated, including the driver of the taxi that blew up in the car park in front of the gateway.

The Indian Express newspaper said police have launched a manhunt for five suspects, including two women, who hired the taxi to go to the gateway.

They got out of the taxi, supposedly to eat lunch, leaving a bag inside.

The driver was also strolling outside when the car blew up, the Express said. The driver of the second cab at the Zaveri Bazaar died in the explosion.

The timing of the blasts raised concerns that they were linked to a dispute over a religious site in the northern city of Ayodhya claimed by both Hindus and Muslims that has been the source of much bloodshed in the past.

The bombings came hours after the release of a long-awaited archaeological report on the site that itself showed divisions over the site’s history.

Many Bombay residents said the bombers seemed intent on triggering strife between India’s two largest religious groups, and recalled the horror of the last big attack in the city – bomb blasts in March 1993 that killed more than 250 people.

The Hindu nationalist World Hindu Council today demanded an immediate ban on Islamic schools, and said its members will hold nation-wide demonstrations tomorrow.

Police Commissioner Ranjit Sharma said investigators were focusing on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), a militant Muslim students’ group outlawed in 2001, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

The latter is one of more than a dozen Islamic rebel groups fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir since 1989, seeking independence for the Himalayan province or its merger with Muslim-dominated Pakistan.

India’s Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani also suggested the involvement of SIMI and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, citing a string of blasts in Bombay in recent months blamed on the two groups.

“Earlier, these blasts were in buses and in almost all cases the organisation involved has been SIMI acting in conjunction with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba,” he said.

India accuses Pakistan of aiding the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba, an allegation Islamabad denies.

The two neighbours – which have gone to war three times since independence from Britain, twice over Kashmir – have made recent moves towards reconciliation, including reinstating diplomats in each others’ capitals and restoring bus links.