Chennai, July 22: Ten days after the Mumbai serial blasts, Coimbatore was reminded of the explosions that shook the textile city in 1998 with police today arresting five persons possessing “bomb-making” materials.

At least 10 others have been rounded up. The quantity of explosives found on them are said to be small but the police are worried about the seizure of a district map from them.

PTI quoted police commissioner Karan Singka as saying that some papers found during a search suggested that the suspects were plotting to blow up the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.

A small quantity of “bomb-making materials”, besides about 400 gm of country-made gun powder (a charge of potassium chlorate and ammonium nitrate usually used for blasting while digging wells) were found on the suspects, police sources said.

Earlier reports from Coimbatore suggested that several kilos of gelatine sticks were also found. But the police did not confirm the seizure.

Wires, pieces of metal, iron balls and a few batteries, besides a device used to ignite gun powder, were fished out from the homes of some of those arrested, the police said.

Three of the arrested belong to a little-known outfit, Manitha Neethi Paasarai, headed by one Ghulam Ahmed.

In 1998, a series of bombs had gone off in the city minutes before BJP leader L.K. Advani was to address an election meeting.

Tourist bomber

In Srinagar, the police today confirmed the identity of the alleged mastermind of the attacks on tourists as Mudasir Gujri alias Raju (in PTI picture).

Sources had earlier said he was arrested.

“His real name is Mohammad Rafiq Sheikh. He had been motivated and taken to Pakistan by one Abu Osama in 1999 to join the Lashkar-e-Toiba,” Jammu and Kashmir director-general of police Gopal Sharma said in Srinagar.

“He has been directly responsible and has taken part in multi-targeted grenade attacks in Srinagar on April 14 and July 11. He personally distributed the grenades and also took part in such attacks.”

Tourists from Bengal were among nine people killed in the serial blasts on July 11.