Millions of people packed trains and buses to get to work in India’s biggest city yesterday, as the country’s financial hub shook off seven bombs on its vital commuter rail network that killed at least 190 people.

Investigators picked through mangled train compartments to search for clues as to who was behind Tuesday’s coordinated bomb blasts in the city of 17 million, with suspicion falling on Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in

Tuesday’s attacks, on first-class compartments and railway stations, seemed to have been aimed at the heart of India’s economic success story, but just hours later the city’s residents were back at work and the stock market was steady.

“It’s a little scary but we have no option to go back to work,” said 24-year-old Amita Rane, a chartered accountant.

Nearly 700 people were wounded when seven bombs blew apart railway carriages and stations packed with rush-hour commuters in the space of just 11 minutes.

The death toll was the worst since a series of bombs killed more than 250 people in Mumbai in 1993. The attacks were also eerily reminiscent of serial bomb blasts on commuter rail networks in Madrid and London in the past two years.

“My first thought is that this is copycat terrorism based on the London and Madrid pattern,” Peter Lehr at the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Britain’s St. Andrews University, told the Times of India.

Extra police were deployed at railway stations, parks, markets and religious institutions across the country to prevent further attacks and possible violence between Hindus and Muslims. Checkpoints were also set up on key roads in major cities.

The explosions happened hours after a series of grenade attacks on tourists in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir, which killed eight people.

Police in Kashmir blamed the attacks there on the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which authorities say is backed by Pakistan and was also behind bomb blasts in crowded markets in New Delhi last October that killed more than 60 people.

Newspapers quoted unnamed security sources as naming Lashkar as the prime suspect for the Mumbai blasts.

Pakistan, which denies Indian charges of tacit support for the militants, condemned what it called a “terrorist attack” in Mumbai.

Indian Junior Foreign Minister Anand Sharma said the blasts were aimed at “wrecking” the peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals but New Delhi remained committed to improving ties with Islamabad.

<B>City shows heart</B>

Mumbai is a teeming metropolis of contrasts, with glitzy high-rise office and apartment blocks standing side-by-side with slums and pavement dwellers. Home to Bollywood, the world’s biggest movie industry, the city is a lure to millions of rural poor.

But despite sometimes been known as hard-hearted, Mumbai residents went out of their way to help fellow city dwellers, offering rides in cars, providing water, and biscuits as well as taking the dead and injured to hospitals.“We’re used to crises here,” said Makaran Bhopatkar, a 35-year-old corporate trainer. “The city survives.”

Muslims in areas near the blasts helped injured Hindus to hospitals and gave cups of tea to family members, while some donated their blood. Overnight, people crowded hospitals to identify family and friends among the corpses, many badly mutilated and charred.

Authorities were running more buses on routes where train services had yet to resume. The benchmark Bombay stock exchange index was little changed in morning trade on Wednesday but bond yields rose to their highest since December 2001. The rupee slipped against the dollar, but analysts did not expect a lasting impact.

“The bomb blasts do not alter our fundamental view of the Indian economy,” Rajeev Malik, analyst with J.P. Morgan, said. India’s economy grew at an average eight percent in past three years.

POSSIBLE CULPRITS

<B>Who could be behind the Mumbai blasts? </B>

■ The following is a list of possible suspects and motives, many of whom have links to each other.

• LASHKAR-E-TAIBA (Army of Taiba, the Islamic holy city of Medina). The prime suspect, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is thought to be one of the only groups with the organisation and the ruthlessness to carry out such large-scale attacks. But the Islamic militant group denied any role in what it called “inhuman and barbaric acts”.

• STUDENTS ISLAMIC MOVEMENT OF INDIA (SIMI). A banned group which is believed to have deep roots in many districts of Maharashtra and links to Lashkar, officials say.

In the past, Lashkar is known to have used SIMI activists to help carry out attacks. SIMI activists have been blamed for small train bombings in northern Uttar Pradesh in recent years.

• OTHER ISLAMIC MILITANT GROUPS. Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of Mohammed) shared the blame with Lashkar for the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament. Jaish has been overshadowed by Lashkar since then but continues to operate in Indian Kashmir with bases in Pakistan.

• PAKISTAN’S INTER-SERVICES INTELLIGENCE (ISI). New Delhi says Pakistan has not done enough to clamp down on Islamic militant groups using its territory to attack India. Some intelligence officials and analysts say Pakistan’s powerful ISI continues to actively support such groups, to maintain pressure on India over disputed Kashmir.

Pakistan denies the charge.

• AL QAEDA. Tuesday’s attacks were eerily reminiscent of bombings on commuter rail networks in Madrid and London in the past two years, which were linked to al Qaeda.

Analysts say Lashkar has links to al Qaeda and may either have been inspired by the bombings in Europe or have taken direct guidance from Osama bin Laden’s organisation.

“India is now on the al Qaeda map,” said security analyst and former Major-General Ashok Mehta, citing New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington.

“This is a highly precise, well-planned operation with months of planning,” he said, a hallmark of al Qaeda-inspired operations.

LIFE GOES ON

<B>Indian blasts kill young dreams, but hope lives </B>

■ His lean body pierced by innumerable splinters and his thighs smashed, Indian teenager Chirag Chauhan may survive injuries inflicted by a series of bombs on Mumbai commuter trains that killed at least 183 people. But with his legs paralysed, the 19-year-old’s love of playing Sunday cricket with friends will become a memory. “What remains of his life now? He hasn’t even started out on it,” wept Hiren Gohil, Chauhan’s brother-in-law, waiting outside the intensive care unit of the state-run King Edward Memorial Hospital, where about 100 other survivors are being treated.

The train Chauhan was travelling on was hit by the fifth of seven bombs – which exploded in a 11-minute spell on Tuesday evening – as it neared Matunga station at the end of a normal monsoon day in India’s teeming financial capital. Many hours after the bombings, relatives and friends of victims were still desperately poring over survivors’ lists at city hospitals. Others were inside the wards, tending to friends and relatives on blood-soaked beds.

On the floor above Chauhan lay Amjad Ansari. The 18-year-old bakery worker will never be able to use his right hand again – it is now a bloodied stump wrapped in bandages. “We still don’t know any detail like where he was. We checked all hospitals and then found him here,” Ansari’s brother, Shakeel, said. Nearly 700 people were wounded when the bombs ripped through railway carriages and stations packed with rush-hour commuters. While badly mangled bodies were cleared away in bags and bed sheets, the survivors were taken to hospitals in ambulances, carts, stretchers or simply on the shoulders of local residents. In the male ward of the King Edward, a woman wailed inconsolably after seeing the half-burnt face and body of her husband, who was critically wounded.

“That cannot be him, that cannot be him. It cannot happen to him,” wailed the woman, whose identity could not be established...