New Delhi, Feb. 24: The old terrorist bomber was a Pakistani infiltrator who targeted Jammu and Kashmir. The new bomber is a home-grown militant who strikes anywhere in the country, with a preference for Assam.

A study of bombings over the past five years implies that knee-jerk recrimination of Pakistan may not help any more.

Data published in Bombshell, the publication of the National Security Guard (NSG), show that blast attacks have fallen by nearly two-thirds in Jammu and Kashmir, from 484 in 2003 to 167 last year.

In the same period, bombings have increased across the country, from the heartland to the Deccan to Bengal. In Assam, the number has jumped nearly five-fold from 23 to 104.

Accompanying the geographical shift is the rise of the Indian militant, whether it is blasts in Hyderabad, Lucknow, Ajmer or Rampur.

Security experts concede that the successful indoctrination and recruiting of Indian youth is a triumph for outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

“You cannot blame Pakistan any more, nor can you just concentrate on Jammu and Kashmir. The plan of the terrorists, we fear, is to have a belt of influence right up to the Philippines,” a source said.

Bangladesh, where Assamese outfit Ulfa’s leadership is based, now figures prominently in the terror attacks, with most explosives and arms being smuggled in across India’s eastern border. Last week, 10kg RDX was seized from a gang smuggling the explosives in across the Brahmaputra.

Officials said that fundamentalist indoctrination had risen most sharply in areas along the Bangladesh border.

The bombing data were collected and analysed by the National Bomb Data Centre, which works under the NSG. NBDC director-general J.K. Dutt has described the spread of terror attacks from Kashmir to the rest of India as a “paradigm shift in the security environment of the country”.

Sixteen states have witnessed a rise in bombings in 2007 over the previous year. In Bengal, the figure rose threefold from six in 2006 to 19 last year. Maoist violence contributed substantially to the figures in some states, but not in Assam where Ulfa carried out most of the strikes.

Former Intelligence Bureau director Shyamal Datta said one reason for the fall in terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir could be that Pakistan-based militants had shifted focus to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bombings are not only getting more frequent in India and the rest of the world but deadlier, too.

Globally, the average death toll from a blast was nine in 2006. Last year, it more than doubled to 19.