The cover of gay porn novel 'Stuff My Stocking', 10 pages of which were used to create characters for email IDs used by IM operatives while planning the February 2013 blasts in Hyderabad.

It is very rare that terrorism and porn comes together. Such was the case in the February 21, 2013, Hyderabad blasts in Dilsukhnagar in which 17 people lost their lives and 120 people were injured.

The blasts were carried out by the Indian Mujahideen under the command of Riyaz Bhatkal. Bhatkal had begun planning the February blasts in 2012 and had roped in his second-in-command Yasin Bhatkal and had charged him with the responsibility to execute the blasts.

Riyaz was also accused of having arranged and delivered 35kg of explosives that were used in the 7/11 Mumbai blasts and is said to have masterminded the blasts not just in Hyderabad but also in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi.

Yasin Bhatkal in turn recruited three other IM members to help him plan and execute the blasts .



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Over the course of the planning and prepartion Riyaz instructed the four crack team members to communicate with him only via email or via the social networking site Nimbuzz. In order to facilitate smooth communication and not be tracked, fake email IDs were created which were changed every month.

Late in 2012, Riyaz Bhatkal sent his four IM team members 10 pages of a male-on-male gay porn novel 'Stuff My Stocking'. The 2010 book is a compilation of "M/M romance stories that are nice and... naughty" says the description of the book.

The drill was the each member would create an email ID on the basis of the first word of the page assigned to him. Over time, the email IDs would be changed every month depending on the page each member was assigned to read.

Following this route, by the time the blasts were executed in February 2013, each operative had changed his email ID at least five times.



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Some of the IDs that were used on different email services were: Ubhot4u, lovesam361, patarasingh, halwa.wala, tashan99

On February 21, 2013, Hyderabad was rocked by a series of blasts which took place at Dilsukhnagar, a crowded shopping area. The blasts took place with 100 metres of each other. The first blast took place outside A1 Mirchi, a roadside eatery, next to Anand Tiffin Centre opposite the Konark Movie hall. The second blast took place two minutes later near the Route 107 bus stand close to the Venkatadri theatre. Investigation revealed that the bombs had been planted on bicycles and that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were used to cause maximum damage.

The blasts came six days after the controversial hanging of Afzal Guru on February 9 who was convicted and had been sentenced to death for his role in the December 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament. Following Afzal Guru's hanging, there had been tension in Hyderabad in the wake of protests being carried out against the hanging and the city had been put on alert. At the same time, other places such as Jammu and Kashmir were also put on alert. Afzal Guru's execution had also triggered revenge threats from Pakistan-based militants and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM).