From his base in Jamshedpur?s Garib Nawaz Colony, Lashkar-e-Toiba leader Tariq Akhtar, arrested from Madan Street on Tuesday evening, kept in touch with contacts in a host of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and Bangladesh.

The city police found the international numbers on the address books of the two cell phones that were seized from him.

The scan also revealed the presence of a fourth member in Tariq?s module. He was present during the October blasts in New Delhi.

The phone numbers of Akhtar?s key contacts in Kashmir and New Delhi were also found on the cell phones.

?It appears that Akhtar was in charge of the entire eastern region and would frequent the city. Some time in July last year, he went to Dhaka to meet a senior Lashkar leader. He received training in explosives there and collected money to be distributed among those he had recruited,? stated Gyanwant Singh, city detective chief.

Back in Jamshedpur, Akhtar continued recruiting for his team and worked on a plan of carrying out an explosion. Of his two associates arrested on Wednesday, Abdullah Zuber, held in Varanasi, had visited the city several times and was a core member of the team.

Zuber was a second-year student in an Islamic educational institution in Varanasi. He was produced in a city court on Thursday and remanded in police custody.

?Zuber hails from Vaishali district, in Bihar. He is as hard a nut to crack as his boss Akhtar,? stated an investigator. The two had plotted to kill a Bajrang Dal leader in Orissa, he added.

According to police, besides Zuber and Noor Ahmed, arrested at Jamshedpur, there are two other key members of the team in Bihar and Jharkhand. They have gone underground since the arrests.

Investigation suggests that Tariq had been recruiting team members for the past one-and-a-half years.