Kausar in Bangladesh!

Officials of India's National Investigations Agency (NIA) have said the prime suspect in the Burdwan blast, Sheikh Kausar, may have escaped into Bangladesh.

"We have found the trail. Kausar was very much in Burdwan for a whole day after the explosion on Oct 2. He got a call from Amina Bibi about the explosions and then moved to Bhatar the next day. Later he reached Hakimpur in Nadia district bordering Bangladesh and fled into that country," said a top NIA official investigating the case.

NIA has recovered a crucial diary containing about 150 telephone numbers from Kausar's brother-in-law Khodor Gazi, now in police custody.

They say a doctor in Assam was the key link between the bomb-makers at Burdwan and the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (JMB) in Bangladesh.

"He used to receive funds from the JMB and Kausar's pick-up boys would collect the money from the doctor in small tranches and bring them to Burdwan," the NIA official said.

The doctor, whose identity is not disclosed in the interest of investigations by the NIA, used to get his funds from JMB operators in Sylhet.

The NIA is also checking unconfirmed reports that three JMB radicals who escaped from a prison van in Bangladesh earlier this year have fled into India and set up a bomb-manufacturing module somewhere in Assam.

"This is a back and forth game, the way these radicals function. When the going is tough for them in Bangladesh, they flee into India and take shelter here. But now that the scene is tough here with the crackdown post-Burdwan, Kausar has possibly fled to Bangladesh. They coordinate their activities across the border better than national agencies," said the NIA official.

The NIA has questioned Burdwan Superintendent of Police (SP) SMH Meerza for three hours on Saturday.

"We asked him about why he stopped our team from accessing the explosion site and why all the explosives recovered were blasted off. Even if a few samples had been preserved, we might have got an idea which radical group was involved because we have that expertise to identify the group by looking at the explosives," the NIA official said.

He said NIA IGP Sanjeev Kumar Singh and SP Vikram Kharate are leading the probe into the Burdwan blasts and they are intrigued by the Bengal police's action which has helped cover up rather than investigate the group involved in the bomb manufacturing.

"We have questioned SP Meerza very hard and that will continue," the NIA official said.

The arrest of six JMB suspects in Assam has helped and led to the 'doctor' but it was not clear whether the medical practitioner was in police custody or still at large.