India has stepped up security nationwide to head off any Hindu-Muslim violence as families of the victims of twin car bombings in the financial capital of Bombay prepared to cremate their dead.
Police have blamed the bombings, which killed 48 people, on an outlawed Muslim students group, acting along with a Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.
Among the victims were eight people from western Gujarat state, where at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died last year in revenge killings following an attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims from the northern holy town of Ayodhya.
In Bombay, police raided slums and picked up people for questioning about yesterday's bombs, which were planted in two taxis.
Financial markets rallied, shrugging off the blasts. The key 30-share index was up 2.14 per cent in late morning trading after closing down 2.92 per cent on Monday. Currency and bond markets also recovered.
Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani was to fly to Bombay to visit some of the 150 injured in the attacks.
Police said they suspected the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), working with the Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatist organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba. No one has claimed responsibility.
The explosions were the worst in Bombay since 1993, when a series of bombs killed at least 260 in what was seen as retaliation for the deaths of minority Muslims after Hindu-Muslim riots.
Those riots were triggered after Hindu zealots demolished a 16th century mosque in the town of Ayodhya which they said had been built by Muslim Mughal invaders on top of a Hindu temple. Police have long feared a major attack or communal clashes in Bombay after the 2002 riots in the nearby state of Gujarat.
Coincidentally, Indian archaeologists on Monday released a court-ordered report saying they had found evidence of a Hindu temple under the ruins of the demolished mosque.