Minutes before blasts email said: 'Stop us if you can':

Minutes before the Ahmedabad serial blasts, an email was sent to the Gujarat police which is now in the possession of the Intelligence Bureau. It read: Stop us if you can.

Intelligence Bureau officials told rediff.com that the email had been sent out by the Indian Mujahideen, a less known outfit which was slowly trying to spread its tentacles in the country.

The Indian Mujahideen in its email also said its intention was to cause panic and fight political outfits which were opposed to Islam. The mail further read, 'We the Indian Mujahideen have carried out attacks and will continue to do so. Stop us if you can.' The first time the Indian Mujahideen came into the limelight was during the Uttar Pradesh blasts in November 2007. Immediately after that a mail had been sent out by the outfit claiming responsibility for the blasts. The police, however, had dismissed the mail as a prank and continued to look for a Harkat ul Jihad e Islami-Lashkar e Tayiba link to the blasts.

The second time the outfit was in the news was during the Jaipur blasts in May this year when it claimed it was behind the incident.

The IB says the latest email shows that the Indian Mujahideen was behind Friday's blasts too, and the Bangalore police is trying to ascertain the similarities between the two blasts. IB officers told rediff.com that in both cases the intention was not to cause casualties but to create a scare. The mail also says the outfit's intention is to fight governments which it feels is anti-Muslim. In both Karnataka and Gujarat the BJP is in power.

So who are the Indian Mujahideen?

The IB says the outfit was floated by a couple of youth from Hyderabad's Old City, as a faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India.

With the arrest of SIMI's top leaders in Indore, the Indian Mujahideen has been given the responsibility of carrying out terror strikes. Although the outfit is not as professional as SIMI it is capable of creating chaos, sources said.

Immediately after the UP blasts, the Indian Mujahideen was deliberately pushed to the forefront by SIMI and HuJI as the heat on them was growing.