NEW DELHI, Sept 24: Indian police said on Wednesday they had arrested five members of a militant group behind a series of bombings in the country, accusing them of links to Islamist militants based in Pakistan.

Police said the five were members of the Indian Mujahideen, an offshoot of the banned Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), but that local Muslims appear to have been trained and backed by Pakistani militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba.

This was the latest in a series of arrests of alleged Indian Mujahideen members. Six were arrested and two killed in a shootout in the capital New Delhi in the past week.

The latest arrests were made after a series of raids overnight in the western state of Maharastra, police chief Hasan Gafoor said in the state capital, Mumbai.

“They (Indian Mujahideen) are definitely related to Lashkar and what exactly are the internal mechanics will be clear from the investigations,” Gafoor told a news conference.

The Indian Mujahideen first emerged in the wake of bombings in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, sending an e-mail to the media just before some of the bombs exploded.

Since then the group has sent e-mail messages to media organisations just before or immediately after bomb attacks in Indian cities, taunting police to catch them or stop them.

Gafoor said that, among the five arrested, one had planted bombs in the western city of Ahmedabad in July, killing nearly 50 people.

Another of those arrested, identified as Mohammed Sadiq and described by police as “a mastermind”, was an expert in putting together bombs and was involved in all the bombings claimed by the Indian Mujahideen so far, Gafoor told reporters.

“They had specifically mentioned Mumbai as the next target in their e-mails and we can say that we have made a serious dent in the activities of the terrorists,” Gafoor said.—Reuters