Top intelligence sources have indicated that the Rameshwaram cafe blast accused could possibly be in touch with foreign handlers. Sources say foreign funding is the new trend among terrorists and cryptocurrency transfer route is possibly being used to fund these blasts. Sources add that temples are no longer targets and the idea is to create panic in public.
Rameshwaram blast perpetrators are old absconders and came into the limelight in 2020 after the ISIS graffiti case. Shariq is from Tirthalli in the Shivamogga district of Karnataka.
“The way they have been absconding for so long and yet carried out a blast again clearly suggest they are getting financial and logistics support from outside India,” sources said.
It is being said that the money possibly came through the crypto route to carry out attacks and sustain during the “cooling-off” period. “So far, we have no idea who was the foreign handler. They attacked Rameshwaram because they wanted to attack a place which is known and crowded and they get more publicity,” intelligence sources said.
They added that the idea was to attack people of software companies during lunch time because of two reasons – it is easy to attack and these foreign MNCs will create panic saying “they are unsafe in India.”
Sources indicate that Rameshwaram cafe was not on the terrorists’ target list, but it became one “suddenly. Intelligence sources suspect that the accused visited many tourist spots in India to do a recce.
“Their earlier targets used to be temples like those in Coimbatore and Mangalore. An attack at a cafe shows traces of Indian Mujahideen which used to attack only crowded places like Sarojini Nagar, Dilsukh Nagar Market in Hyderabad,” sources added.
CNN-News18 had earlier reported how IM and SIMI are coming under one umbrella to carry out major blasts in India.
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