Mumbai, Sept. 24: Yet another mastermind of the explosions that have shaken India in the past few months emerged today with police here claiming Azamgarh native Mohammed Sadiq Sheikh had plotted the attacks as logistical head of the Indian Mujahideen.

The police said they had yesterday arrested five Indian Mujahideen militants responsible for all blasts across India since 2005. Among them are Sadiq and Mohammed Afzal Mutalik, who allegedly planted the bombs in Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital on July 26, killing nearly 30 in the first such attack on a healthcare centre in India.

Two of those arrested — Sadiq and Sheikh Mohammed Ansar — have technical backgrounds. Ansar is a software engineer, like the absconding Tauqeer, who till now was believed to have been the technology brain of the computer-savvy outfit. Sadiq worked as programme engineer with an electronics company in Mumbai.

The police hope the arrests will help unravel the mystery of terror emails sent by the Indian Mujahideen from hacked Wi-Fi connections.

Mumbai police chief Hassan Gafoor said his force had unearthed a huge cache of explosive material: 10kg of ammonium nitrate, 15 detonators, 8kg of ball bearings, four active electronic circuits, one sub-machine gun, two .38 revolvers, 30 cartridges of 9mm carbine and eight cartridges of .38 revolvers. The material, brought from Karnataka, was found in the Kurla and Sewri suburbs of Mumbai. The seizure, Gafoor claimed, indicated the city was the next target after Delhi.

Gafoor, who addressed the media along with joint commissioner (crime) Rakesh Maria, said all the five arrested men were from Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh, a region from where Dawood Ibrahim sourced most of his gangsters, including Abu Salem. The Azamgarh link also surfaced after the Delhi encounter last Friday.

Gafoor said all of them had received training in a “hostile country” — police sources said Pakistan — at different times. The police chief was, however, silent on how they managed to nab the quintet, who have been remanded in police custody till October 7.

The 38-year-old Mutalik, with nine cases against him, is the only one with a criminal record, being a member of the Fallu Rehman extortion gang.

The police claimed he stole four cars from Navi Mumbai and planted bombs in two of them at Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital. Most of those killed were relatives and friends of victims of the earlier blasts in the city that day.

Gafoor said the key arrest was that of Sadiq, 31, who, he claimed, was a founder-member of the Indian Mujahideen along with Atif, killed by Delhi police in last Friday’s encounter. Maria said the third founder-member was one Roshan Khan of Karnataka, who is now in Pakistan.

“While Atif executed terror operations, Sadiq worked as the main controller of logistics. Along with one more person, they formed the think tank of the group,” Maria said.

Also in the dragnet is Mohammed Arif Sheikh, 38, an expert in making bombs and electronic circuits.

Maria said Arif was involved in all terror explosions engineered by the group since 2005, including the attacks on the Shramjeevi Express and the Sankat Mochan temple in Varanasi.

Thane scrap dealer Mohammed Zakir Sheikh, the fifth man arrested, was allegedly involved in planting the unexploded bombs in Surat on July 27. The group apparently tried to use digital timers for the first time in the diamond city, but the circuit developed a snag.

In another revelation, Maria said the five arrested men had helped plant the bombs in Mumbai’s local trains on July 11, 2006. “They had assisted the bomb planters in planting the seven explosives,” Gafoor said.