New Delhi, June 2 :     The one-man inquiry commission headed by Justice (retd) P.R. Gokulakrishnan has confirmed in its report that home minister L.K. Advani was the target of the Coimbatore serial blasts which killed 60 people and injured more than 200. The report said that the Al Umma, the fundamentalist outfit which engineered the explosions, sent human bombs to the rally ground where the BJP leader was to address a gathering on February 14, 1998. Advani had a providential escape. Gokulakrishnan said that confessional statements of some of the accused have revealed that Al Umma chief S.A. Basha had personally authorised the use of human bombs. The meticulously-planned conspiracy, he said, was not only to eliminate Advani but also to trigger communal violence in Coimbatore and other parts of Tamil Nadu. According to the report, Amanullah, one of the accused who was picked up following the blasts, confessed that in January six people had met Basha in Chennai to chalk out plans to 'avenge the death of 18 Muslims' who were massacred in the riots that broke out in Coimbatore in November-December the previous year. They were Ansari, Nawab Khan, Ozir, Mujibur Rahman, Siddique Ali and Jahir Hussein, he said. Amanullah also confessed that on February 7, he had an exclusive meeting with the Al Umma chief who 'told him that Advani was coming to Coimbatore'. Basha, he said, asked him 'whether he could finish him (Advani)'. When he agreed, Basha ordered him to act as a human bomb, the report said. Basha also gave him Rs 600 and sent two other persons - Rafique, alias Shanmugam, and Amjath Ali. The plan for February 14 was that Amanullah would approach Advani and trigger the bomb hidden on him, but only after the first set of explosions. But the ploy flopped. With metal detectors installed all over the place, neither Amanullah nor any of his accomplices could reach anywhere near the dais. They left the rally venue after learning that Advani would not attend the meeting. Besides Amanullah, the commission chairman also took into account the confessional statements of seven other accused. Some of them confessed during interrogation that the human bombs were instructed to get as close as possible to the car from which Advani would alight and then detonate the explosive devices for maximum impact. Some others were even instructed by Basha to hurl powerful bombs at the dais itself. The probes have revealed that the plot was not hatched by the Pakistan-based Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). According to the commission report, the bombs and other explosive devices were procured from an explosives manufacturing unit in Mysore. Quoting the sworn affidavit of an officer of the Special Investigating Team (SIT) formed to probe the blasts, the judge said that Al Umma's aim was to 'unite all Muslim fora to react violently whenever Islam was humiliated'. 'Further,' the commission chairman said, 'they also planned to kill Hindu fundamentalists and destroy the properties of the majority community.' He said Basha and some of his accomplices had 'brainwashed' young Muslims to target members of the majority community after the 1997 riots.