Indian police arrests man suspected of taking part in New Delhi bombings

Indian police arrested a man suspected of taking part in bombings that tore through two markets in New Delhi last month, a news report said Friday, a day after officials acknowledged that another suspect being held may have lied about planting one of the bombs.

The arrest, reported by the Press Trust of India news agency, could provide a boost to the investigation into the attacks, which until now has made little headway in tracking down the assailants, widely believed to be Islamic militants fighting to wrest Kashmir from India.

Indian police launched their biggest-ever manhunt following the Oct. 29 bombings, which targeted two markets and a bus and killed 60 people.

The suspect, who was not identified, was picked up at the New Delhi Railway Station early Friday, PTI reported, citing a senior police official.

Police officials were not immediately available for comment. The official reportedly told PTI that investigators were now tracking down associates of the suspect, who is also alleged to have taken part in a July 5 bombing of a makeshift Hindu temple in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya.

Earlier this week, police arrested Ghulam Mohammad Mohiudin Lone, 21, who claimed to have planted the bomb that exploded in the crowded Paharganj market.

Lone told his military intelligence interrogators that he used to be a member of Hizb-ul Mujahedeen, a militant organization fighting Indian security forces in India's portion of Kashmir, and had recently joined the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba group.

He was transferred on Wednesday to the custody of New Delhi police, where further questioning revealed inconsistencies in his story, officials told reporters Thursday.

Several police officials were quoted by Indian newspapers Friday as saying that Lone may be a poor orphan from Kashmir's Doda district who stole money from his employer, a truck owner, and made the "confession" out of fear.

"It took just 15 minutes for Lone's (New Delhi police) interrogators to conclude that (he) had, for some reason, told the Military Intelligence a pack of lies," the Hindustan Times, a national daily, said.

Police said Lone stole 20,000 rupees (US$445; Ђ375) from his truck-owner employer in Kashmir. The owner corroborated the story but says Lone, who worked as a cleaner at the company, stole 31,700 rupees (US$700; Ђ600). I.L.