The only smart thing union home minister Suskhilkumar Shinde has said since the twin-blasts in Hyderabad on Thursday evening is, to misquote Churchill, a naught wrapped in zilch inside a zero. Asked about the involvement of the suspected terror group behind the blasts, Shinde on Thursday said nothing can be said at the moment.

On Friday morning, after visiting the blast site in Hyderabad’s busy Dilsukhnagar, Shinde said the death toll in the blasts is now 14 and 119 people were injured. Asked about the involvement of the suspected terror group behind the blasts, he said it was too early to blame any organisation or outfit, including Indian Mujahideen, for the blasts.

He also made some additional revelations, saying those who masterminded the blasts will be identified and arrested soon. “We will leave no stone unturned to achieve the result immediately,” he told reporters.

According to a report in the Hindu, Shinde reached Hyderabad early morning and drove straight to the blast sites amid tight security. He was accompanied by Andhra Pradesh governor ESL Narasimhan, chief minister N Kiran Kumr Reddy and top officials of the state police and the National Investigation Agency (NIA). State Congress president Botsa Satyanarayana, home minister P Sabitha Reddy, major industries minister J Geetha Reddy, director-general of police V Dinesh Reddy and others were also in his entourage.

There is nothing to suggest that the high-profile trip to the blast site has enlightened our home minister because he still can't decide if he should hand over the investigation to the NIA, but he should be applauded for not rushing to put the blame on the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

Suspicion that the blasts were the handiwork of the IM are based primarily on the modus operandi. The home-grown terror outfit, it is said, is known to have placed bombs in tiffin boxes on bikes or bicycles, and leave them at crowded places during peak hours in its earlier attacks, picked up low-cost and easily-available explosives and the relatively crude modes of detonation.

Ammonium nitrate, a chemical as easily available as you can think of, was used in the Dilsukhnagar blasts, investigators have found, and with the rest of the boxes ticked, it does not take a rocket scientist to zero in on IM.

Simple logic says once you zero in on the modus operandi, and trace the presence of the module or group of the terror group in the vicinity in days or months leading up to the blasts, it is easier to go after the perpetrators. Ergo the theory: since two of the Pune blast suspects arrested by Delhi police in October 2012, said to be IM operatives, had recced Hyderabad last year, chances are IM is behind the blasts.

According to a release issued by Delhi police’s special cell on October 26, 2012, the duo arrested — Syed Maqbool and Imran Khan — did a “recce of Dilkhush (sic) Nagar, Begum Bazar and Abids in Hyderabad on a motorcycle. This was done on the instruction of Riyaz Bhatkal (the IM chief).”

It is all going as per theory but for a couple of hiccups: the same boxes were checked for the blast in Pune in August last year as well, and the investigations are yet to reach any conclusion.

If the modus operandi at the Dilsukhnagar blasts is the basis behind zeroing in on IM, it beats logic that there should be only one Riyaz Bhatkal who can mastermind such attacks.  Every terrorist would look for easily available and low-cost chemical (umm, ammonium nitrate), look for carriers easily available, low-cost and difficult-to trace back to the owner (voila, bicycles!), low-cost and unsophisticated detonators (easily assembled) and find aluminum tiffin boxes to pack them in (again, low-cost, easily available and hard to trace back to owner), right?

Serious investigation involves looking for far more critical and credible clues before associating names of organisations with such attacks. But that is compromised when investigations are purportedly taken over by TV channels trying to be the "first" to reveal the name of the terror group even before the reverberations of the blast have died down. Why should our first concern be to know the terrorist rather than attend to the terrorised? Who cares whether it is IM, HuJi, ABS (Abhinav Bharat Sanghatan) or any other alphabetical concoction that has caused the tragedy?

Why can't we leave that for later, for thorough investigation? Why can't we, for once, listen to our home minister?