cIndia police say were warned about Hyderabad bomb threat

HYDERABAD, FEB 22 - India's government was accused on Friday of major intelligence failure s after twin bicycle bombings killed 16 people, as it emerged police were warned months ago of a possible attack at the site.
The near-simultaneous attacks on Thursday night outside a cinema and a bus stand in Hyderabad's Dilsukh Nagar district were the first deadly bombings in India since 2011 and triggered international condemnation including from rival Pakistan.
But with no group claiming responsibility, the government was embarrassed by revelations which the opposition said exposed systemic security failures at a time when India is on heightened alert.
The attacks also raised questions about whether Australia's cricket team would go ahead with a scheduled match against India in Hyderabad starting on March 2, although organisers said the city would still host the Test.
As investigators sifted through the wreckage in their hunt for the perpetrators, newspapers pointed the finger at Indian Mujahideen--a group which has claimed responsibility for previous attacks.
A senior detective said two of the group's militants had spoken of a possible attack during interrogation last October.
"We interrogated two militants who said they had recced various spots in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune for a possible attack," said SN Shrivastava, a Delhi police commissioner with responsibility for anti-terror operations.
 "One of the places they mentioned was Dilsukh Nagar," he told AFP.
The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party seized on the revelation as a sign of intelligence failure by the Congress party-led government.
"If they had specific information, what was the central government and the state government doing? Why was nothing done to prevent such an incident?" said Sushma Swaraj, the BJP's leader in parliament.
"Every time incidents like Hyderabad blasts happen, we are told that there was an intelligence failure . Why is there always an intelligence failure ?" said Communist lawmaker Basudev Acharya.
Efforts to find the perpetrators suffered a blow when investigators discovered the cables of closed-circuit TV cameras near the scene had been cut.
Indian intelligence services have been embarrassed by a series of attacks in recent years, including in Mumbai in 2008 when gunmen from Pakistan killed 166 people after storming three luxury hotels and the main train station.