Police claimed these SIMI activists had told them they were even training militant cadres for the attacks. “Those interrogated have said that training camps and militant cadres were being organised to target some top leaders... while they are being evasive about names, they said their targets were leaders associated with the Babri Masjid case and the recent Gujarat riots. The Samjhauta Express blast connection is also in the realm of possibility,” Indore SP Anshuman Yadav told The Indian Express.

The 13 arrested SIMI activists have told their interrogators that apart from Advani and Modi, others being targeted were Uma Bharti, VHP leaders Ashok Singhal and Praveen Togadia. The SIMI activists, including their leader Safdar Nagori, said the decision to target these leaders was taken because no action was taken, despite several inquiry commissions, against leaders involved in the Babri Masjid demolition and Gujarat riots.

The 13 activists are being interrogated jointly by the Intelligence Bureau and police units of at least six states — teams from Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Delhi and Haryana have all landed — at a secure interrogation centre in Indore.

Yadav said that while SIMI’s association with the Samjhauta train blasts is not yet established, it is in the “realm of high probability”.

“The IB and Haryana police are interrogating them on the issue. Though there is strong suspicion of their involvement, no linkages have been established as yet,” he said.

Indore has a connection to the Samjhauta Express blasts case — much of the material used to create the lethal suitcase bombs were bought from the city’s Kothari market. While investigators had traced the terror trail to the city last year, even identifying the shops from where articles like suitcases, plastic bottles, battery were purchased, there has been no movement forward ever since. At that time, Indore police had even ruled out any SIMI connection to the blasts.

“At that time there was nothing to establish the SIMI connection because all these people, who have been arrested now, had been at large for years. With their arrest, things change considerably,” Yadav said.