A competent source in the Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) said that the government is now ready to pay several lakh taka for leads about the possible hideout of Abdur Rahman, the mastermind behind the near simultaneous blasts of Wednesday.

"The evidence against Rahman and JMB is too overwhelming to be lulled into the false sense that they constitute no threat," said a source. So far, all the arrested JMB men have given identical confessions, saying that Abdur Rahman had orchestrated the attacks.

"Now, we are not conducting the investigation from an anti-Awami League perspective," he added.

Right after the August 17 blasts, some policymakers started accusing the main opposition mainly on the basis of its anti-AL policy and those [accusations] were not grounded in fact or evidence, he pointed out.

The agencies have also decided to circulate pictures of Abdur Rahman and his most infamous disciple Bangla Bhai. Sources said artists are working on portraits of Abdur Rahman and Bangla Bhai, showing their possible disguises including their shaven busts.

State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar at a meeting with different law enforcement agencies Sunday asked them to arrest Abdur Rahman "at any cost".

He also asked the agencies to compile the last two years' newspaper reports and interviews of the JMB leaders.

The source quoting Babar said, "The bomb attack is just a phase in their [JMB's] gradual development as a militant organisation. They have demonstrated their capabilities. Their political interest or agenda hardly matters to us. What really matters to us is to know where they are going to hit next. May be they have plans to kill some political leaders."

Meanwhile, the home ministry has been instructed to perceive and analyse new threats. Officials say the militant outfits may target public places to hit and kill people, or big media houses like a major TV channel to draw international attention.

"They can even hit religious places to make the government embarrassed internationally. For instance, an attack on a Hindu temple will instantly worsen our relations with India," remarked a source.

This sort of speculation has led the law enforcement agencies to deploying forces in different shopping malls, cinema halls, terminals, religious and other strategic places.

Meanwhile, the intelligence agencies have detected a mobile phone number that seems to have been used by Abdur Rahman or his close associate in co-ordinating the blasts in 63 of the 64 districts across the country.

"We have found this specific number in the mobile sets used by the arrested JMB militants. We gather that many of them dialled the number several times Wednesday," said the source.

The intelligence agencies by making a false call on that number concluded that its owner is in a northern district.

The agencies have taken several arrestees to the northern districts to help them identify the owner of the phone or Abdur Rahman and his cohorts.

There is another number common in the mobile phone sets of arrested JMB cadres, but that remains shut, added the source.

A source in the National Security Intelligence (NSI) said that neither Abdur Rahman nor Bangla Bhai is now in Bangladesh. He said they have probably fled to India within a day of the attack.

"There is even a possibility that on Wednesday Abdur Rahman was sitting in Indian territory close enough to the Bangladeshi border to access the Bangladeshi mobile phone network," he observed.

A ruling BNP policymaker told The Daily Star yesterday that Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is personally supervising the action of the law enforcers. She has given the law enforcers 15 days time to hunt down the criminals and to unearth foreign links, if any, behind the bomb attacks.

"The prime minister was in her office till half past midnight Sunday, discussing the matters and directing different authorities," the policymaker said.