This week's Mumbai attacks were masterminded by the same Indian techie behind the multiple bombings in Delhi, Jaipur, Bangalore and Ahmedabad earlier this year, according to the Scotsman newspaper.

Abdul Subhan Qureshi, a 36-year-old computer engineer, is the man also suspected of being behind the earlier multiple bombings. While an email message claiming responsibility and sent to Indian media on Wednesday night said the attackers were from a group called Deccan Mujahideen, the group is unlikely to actually exist. Sajjan Gohel, a security expert in London, dubbed it a "front name" and said the group was "nonexistent."

Alex Neill, head of the Royal United Services Institute's Asia security programme, said the attacks were probably carried out by local jihadists linked to the radical Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).  This is a banned Islamic fundamentalist organisation which advocates the "liberation of India" by converting it to Islam.

Neill said that Qureshi, also known as Tauqeer, is from Mumbai ,and that his expertise with internet security was a vital part of the plot. Qureshi is an IT whizz-kid and it would appear that investigators are looking at him as the main suspect, Neill said. Police believe that he is the one who has hacked into wireless internet networks and used the alias "al-Arbi" to sign emails claiming responsibility for the attacks on behalf of a group called the Indian Mujahideen.

Neill claimed that Deccan Muhajideen would be a militant offshoot of SIMI which has carried out attacks across India. He believed that they were highly trained and would have been sent to al-Qaeda training camps to prepare. Most of them would have been  recruited from the Mumbai region. X

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