All cycles were bought few hours before blasts

When Mohammad Arif, a salesman at Cycle Haat, sold an Apollo bicycle on Tuesday afternoon it was just another sale for him. His opinion would change the next day. Just hours after the customer left, Arif learned that the city had been hit by a series of blasts, with one attack just a kilometre away from his shop. The next morning, he was confronted by a police team enquiring about his Tuesday sales. The customer that day was a terrorist, the bicycle an eventual bomb carrier.

The Cycle Haat is one of the four bicycle shops that were used by the terrorists to make their purchases—The Indian Express tracked them down in the Kishan Pole area of the Walled City. Investigations reveal that all the bicycles were purchased just a few hours before the bombs went off: the Apollo cycle at Cycle Haat was sold at around 2 pm as was an Avon cycle from Santosh Trading Company; at 2:30 pm, Shanker Trading Company sold an Atlas Gold cycle and the final purchase was completed at Sri Balaji Cycle Store at around 3 pm.

The shopkeepers confirm that the customers requested them to install locks and carriers on all cycles, and made no attempt to bargain for better prices.

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According to Mohamad Arif, the man who bought the cycle from him seemed to be in his early 20s and didn’t speak much. He asked for a bill and left within minutes. Meanwhile, Satya Narayan Maheshwari, the owner of Santosh Trading Company, sold a cycle to someone he believed couldn’t speak Hindi very well. “He had a distinct accent, similar to that of Bengalis,” Maheshwari said.

The shopkeepers have been questioned by the police several times and have assisted the police in making sketches of the culprits.