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Varanasi blasts: phone calls gave lead
Tribune News Service

Lucknow, April 8
Manually sifting through details of approximately four lakh calls made from Varanasi on the day of the blast is how Special Task Force (STF) got their initial lead which finally led to the arrest of the mastermind Waliullah, a cleric working out of a nondescript mosque in Phulpur in Allahabad.

However, with stringent regulations on tapping of phones coming into force for security reasons following the Amar Singh tape episode the police may now face an uphill task in procuring such details from service providers revealed the STF sources.

"Unfortunately this will indirectly work to the advantage of the criminals and terrorists" said a senior STF officer. He pointed out that now more crucial time would be lost in getting sanctions.

Sharing the month-long gruelling task of pinning down the Varanasi blast mastermind who named the main accused and the modus operandi the STF source said they depended mainly on details of the four lakh telephone calls made from Varanasi on that day.

Of them around eight to ten thousand were international calls. Approximately 27,000 mobile phones on roaming were present in the city that day. The data from every single call was manually gone through before the police zeroed on to the ones that raised eyebrows.