posted May 14, 2008 01:42 AM              

NEW DELHI: Tuesday's episode of serial blasts in Jaipur bears a close resemblance to the pattern followed by the suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba militants in Sankatmochan temple attack in Varanasi on March 7, 2006, the 7/11 Mumbai suburban train blasts and the Malegaon blasts on September 8 the same year.

The seven near-simultaneous blasts in Jaipur occurred within a time frame of 12 minutes, similar to the Mumbai suburban train blasts on July 11, 2006, where seven bombs went off within 11 minutes. More than 200 were killed in the Mumbai attacks. The serial blasts at Sankatmochan temple and at Varanasi railway station on March 7, 2006, too occurred within a time frame of 15 minutes.

Like in the case of Jaipur, the explosives in Malegaon were planted on bicycles outside a mosque were a huge gathering was observing Sabe Baarat on September 8, 2006. Other instances where terrorists placed bombs on cycles were in serial explosions in court premises in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow on November 23, 2007.

The jehadis' designs were similar not just in the precision timing but also in their motive to inflict large casualties. Jaipur, Mumbai suburban trains and Varanasi serial blasts — in all of these, the terrorists had planted seven bombs and managed to explode all of them except in the case of Sankatmochan blasts in which four bombs were defused.

For the jehadis, Tuesdays and Fridays seem to be the most favoured days to set off their attack. While 7/11 Mumbai blasts, Sankatmochan blasts and attack at Ram mandir temple complex on July 5, 2005, happened on Tuesdays, as many as half-a-dozen bomb attacks in the past decade were on Fridays.