Two sketches of a suspect in a monk’s robe in the Bodh Gaya serial blasts were released on Tuesday by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) which struggled for a breakthrough in its probe nine days after the terror attack.

Sources in the NIA said the sketches–the first to be released in the probe–were made public on the basis of details provided by three eyewitnesses who apparently saw the suspect shortly before the blasts on 7th July and also material emanating from CCTV footage.

The two sketches, one in which the suspect is wearing a green mask and another bare face, were posted by the NIA on its website.

The sources said the suspect in monk attire was seen in the CCTV footage moving around Buddhism’s holiest shrine in suspicious circumstances at around 3:30 AM to 4:30 AM shortly before the blasts.

NIA also released the CCTV footage and sought information about the suspect.

Senior NIA officials said attempts made to locate this person have not yielded any result so far prompting the central probe agency to release the sketch.

NIA sources said the CCTV footage was being refined further to get a clearer image of the suspect.

Among the three eyewitnesses, whose names have been kept secret for probe purposes, two are foreigners and one local.

The foreigners are from Sri Lanka and Thailand while the third one is a local Gaya native, the sources said.

The services of the private security company within the temple premises, meanwhile, has been terminated after the Maha Bodhi Temple Management Committee took strong note of security lapses that resulted in the serial bomb blasts.

Ten bombs went off in and around Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya on 7th July in near synchronised explosions in which two monks were wounded.

NIA had earlier detained two natives of Gaya from Maoist-infested Barachhati and four youngsters, including a girl, in Patna in connection with the incident. But, they were all released for want of evidence.

The agency has already announced a reward of Rs 6 lakh for providing information about suspects in the blast.

NIA has also dispatched teams to a watch factory at Rajkot after it emerged that the watches from this place were used as timers in the loosely packed improvised explosive devices to trigger the blasts.

Agencies suspect that the terror module involved in the blasts could be a new one as the unexploded IEDs do not have signature of bombs which were used in previous terror strikes across the country.

NIA sources said a preliminary analysis of three unexploded IEDs recovered from Mahabodhi temple do not match with the IEDs used so far for terror strikes in the country.

In an attempt to nail the terrorists, NIA matches the style of making IEDs with the previous blasts to identify the module which could have executed the blasts.

However, they said it is a very preliminary inference drawn by the investigators and further probe would clarify the picture.