We have not arrested anyone in connection with the blasts case," a senior Hyderabad police officer, who did not want to named for this report, said.
"If you are investigating a burglary and the investigation leads you to a thief who is wanted in connection with another case, you don't leave him and carry on, right? In the same way, when we found that these people were wanted in previous cases, we arrested them. And since we have some leads, we are also questioning them regarding the blasts," he said.
Hyderabad Commissioner of Police Balwinder Singh confirmed that those arrested recently were wanted in earlier cases.
"Yes, they are wanted in previous cases. But they are also being questioned in connection with the August 25 blasts," Singh said.
Asked about the allegations of torture and illegal detentions before the men were produced in court, Commissioner Singh said it was untrue. "Every time people are arrested, such allegations crop up. It is totally untrue that the youngsters were tortured."
"Those who have been cleared after questioning have been sent home. Their names will be cleared from the cases," he added.
Another police officer, who also did not want to be named, said some of the men arrested had links with Shahid Bilal, the alleged mastermind of the December 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science and the August 25 Hyderabad blasts, who was reportedly gunned down in Pakistan on August 30.
"When you are dealing with organisations which are shrouded in secrecy," he said, "there is very little hard intelligence that comes our way. In such a situation, there is nothing wrong in pursuing the soft intelligence that you have in your hands. That is exactly what we did. We followed the leads and gathered bits and pieces of information here and there. Now it is a case of two or three missing pieces which when they fall in place will help up solve the case."
Photograph: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images
Also read: The dossier of a terror mastermind
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