New Delhi, July 27: Intelligence officials are veering round to the view that local Simi activists might have engineered the serial blasts, and the Indian Mujahideen was a front for outfits based abroad.

Based on preliminary inputs, sources said the multiple explosions could not have taken place without local support in both Ahmedabad and Bangalore. They suspect that the local cell of the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi) could have used some members of the floating population to plant the bombs.

However, intelligence agencies believe that the attacks were masterminded by bigger outfits like the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkat-ul-Jehad-al-Islami and funded from outside India.

“Not that these kinds of explosives and blasts require too much money. The blasts were not so much meant to kill people, going by the intensity, but to cause panic, disturb peace, create divisions on communal lines and target economic growth,” an intelligence official said.

The Indian Mujahideen, the organisation that claimed responsibility for the Ahmedabad attacks, could be fronting for banned organisations based in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the sources said.

The Indian Mujahideen also has Simi “ansars” (full-time cadres). “There is not much distinction between these outfits anymore. That is a cause for serious concern as they are all co-ordinating with one another,” a security expert said.

While Simi’s original bases were in Uttar Pradesh, its reach has spread to Delhi, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Bengal, Kerala, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka over the years. The organisation is also said to be responsible for the Mumbai train blasts in 2006, masterminded by the Lashkar.

Simi had been banned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act in 2001. The ban was renewed by the home ministry this year, and the Supreme Court had rejected a plea to lift it.