The sketches of the Delhi court blast suspects

New Delhi, Sept. 8: If you think Delhi police do not “book” bombers, you are wrong. They do — and usually within hours of a terror attack.

As many as 2,000 such “terrorists” are now bound and securely tucked away in a steel almirah in a Lodhi Road facility in south Delhi.

That’s where terror suspect “sketches” — as indispensable as breaking news after a bomb attack — are gathering dust.

Two more sketches were added yesterday to the albums and files maintained by the special cell of the counter-terrorism wing of Delhi police after the high court blast. The death toll in the explosion today climbed to 13.

The sketches supposedly resemble terrorists behind several blasts in the capital and neighbouring states. Most, if not all, of these cases are unsolved in police records.

“The sketches were drawn by our team of experts based on statements of eyewitnesses. But investigations could not proceed beyond that,” said a police officer who did not wish to be named.

“It is very difficult to trace the terrorists on the basis of the sketches. But that is our first job. The sketches usually do not take us far and we hit a dead end. Then we have another blast and another set of sketches,” the officer added.

A fresh blast is also a reminder for investigators to dust the albums and reopen them.

“I cannot remember if we have solved any blast cases depending on the sketches drawn,” Delhi police spokesperson Rajan Bhagat told The Telegraph.

“We have a team of 10 people whose job is to draw sketches after any major incident based on statements of witnesses, be it murder or blast cases,” Bhagat added.

The sketch team is posted in the computer section at the police headquarters. Not that they do nothing else until tragedy strikes. “They feed data into computers when they are not drawing sketches,” Bhagat said. “They are our permanent employees.”

Although the sketches have yielded few culprits, Bhagat said they are experts at drawing. “Before computer-aided sketching was introduced, they used to draw by hand,” he added.

A member of the team said the statements of witnesses varied from one to another, resulting in sketches that often made the uninitiated wonder if people resembling the drawings really existed.

“This is the reason we end up drawing several sketches of the same person that do not match with one another. The problem is compounded because we get many witnesses as the investigation progresses,” he said.

Sketching appears to be an irresistible itch for every investigating wing. The National Investigation Agency, which has taken over the Delhi court blast probe, has now employed its own team to draw sketches of the suspects who were apparently seen with the briefcase bomb.

“I am sure they will have a different sketch of the accused. Most of the time the witnesses say some new thing and that leads to complications,” the Delhi police team member said.