Timers of two unexploded bombs found near the Taj Hotel [Images] had been set for about five hours following the start of the terror strikes here last week, a senior Mumbai police official said on Wednesday.

"The timer on one of the bombs found near the Taj Hotel had a timer set for about four hours and 57 minutes and would have exploded at around 0100 hours on November 27," Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rakesh Maria said.

Another bomb found in a lane behind the luxury hotel in South Mumbai also had a similar time set for explosion. However, both bombs were defused by the Bomb Detection and Disposal Squad in time, he said.

Two other bombs were placed by the terrorists in taxis, one of which exploded in suburban Vile Parle and the other in Central Mumbai at 2247 and 2245 hours respectively.

The arrested terrorist, Ajmal Amin Kamal, has confessed to having planted the bomb in the taxi, which exploded at Central Mumbai, Maria said.

"The bomb, which exploded in the taxi at Vile Parle, was placed by the terrorists who were at Nariman House," he said.

The police said the group of ten terrorists had boarded five taxis in groups of two to travel to their respective destinations after landing in the Cuffe Parade area of South Mumbai in a rubber dinghy.

The multiple strikes on November 26, including at Taj, Trident-Oberoi, Nariman House and Mumbai CST station, had left over 180 persons dead and more than 300 injured.

None of the terrorists had any proof of identity in their possession and their origin would not have been traced back to Pakistan easily had it not been for the arrest and interrogation of Kamal, police officials said.  

"Had this terrorist had been killed we would not have been able to trace their roots," Maria said.

None of the possessions or the clothes of the terrorists had any marking indicating where they were from and in some cases the terrorists had taken overt measures to prove they were Indian, he said.

One of the terrorists had a thread resembling a sacred thread usually tied on the wrist by persons from the Hindu community on his wrist and several of them had fake identity cards showing them to be students of Indian colleges.

In one of the identity cards seized, the photo was of the terrorist but the name listed was 'Dinesh Kumar'.

Kamal, who hails from Faridkot in Punjab province of Pakistan, is understood to have told the police that he was promised about Rs 1.5 lakh for carrying out the attack.

The captured terrorist, who is in his twenties, is the son of a hawker and had shifted to Lahore [Images] to live with his brother before he joined militant group Lashkar-e-Tayiba, police officials said.

The police has seized mobile phones from multiple centres of the terror strikes and the data stored on them is being verified, they said.