New Delhi, Feb. 10: Delhi police are racing against a one-week Supreme Court deadline for cracking Tuesday night?s assault on S.A.R. Geelani.

The attack, sources said, figured in the discussions that police commissioner K.K. Paul had when he met the Prime Minister and the home minister yesterday to invite them to the coming Delhi Police raising day celebrations.

The apex court had yesterday asked Delhi police to submit a report on the investigations into the attack within a week after Geelani?s lawyer, Ram Jethmalani, expressed apprehension about police role in the assault.

A division bench had observed that the incident was ?very disturbing?.

Delhi University lecturer Geelani, whose acquittal in the 2001 Parliament attack case by Delhi High Court was challenged by Delhi police, was shot at by an unidentified assailant outside his lawyer Nandita Haksar?s house.

Paul met Shivraj Patil just after a delegation of the All India Defence Committee for Geelani had submitted to the home minister a memorandum seeking an impartial investigation into and transfer of the assault case to the CBI.

The message, police officials said, was clear that ?Delhi police should solve the case before the next Supreme Court hearing?.

Joint commissioner Ranjit Narain had told a news conference that ?we are going to crack this case soon?.

The likely transfer of the Parliament attack case to the CBI could put further pressure on Delhi police, whose investigations are already under attack from Geelani?s well-wishers after the assault. They believe he was wrongly implicated in that case.

Geelani is in hospital and is still unfit to give a statement to the police but the sleuths are already dismissing a religious, political or even terrorist angle to the case.

They are probing instead the chances of a personal motive behind the assault, which is believed to be the direct outcome of his acquittal.

?Geelani is too small a target for any terrorist group. The attack looks more like a case of vendetta,? police sources said.

?There is nothing much that one would have gained from his death in terms of creating political turmoil. In such circumstances, personal motive is the only strong reason for attacking him,? they added.

Delhi police teams are scrutinising the list of those who met two of Geelani?s co-accused in the Parliament attack case ? Shaukat Hussain Guru and Mohammad Afzal ? at Tihar jail. The two were sentenced to death but have challenged the order.

An analysis by Delhi police forensic experts shows that there was only one assailant. Geelani was shot with a .32 semi-automatic pistol just after he had parked his car about 100 yards from Haksar?s Vasant Enclave house.

The police have disputed Haksar?s version of the sequence of events as, they said, she was not a witness to the shooting; she was inside her house, working on a computer, when the shots were fired.