Thickbox(3.1) not working with latest jQuery?

Issue while using Thickbox(3.1) jquery

We have implemented thick box jquery image popup in one of our products and it is not working properly. But the refered site shown that it is working fine. We have debugged the issue and found that the issue happening once the jquery trying to get all images with same rel attribute. In the refered site it is achieved by the code

       TB_TempArray = $("a[@rel="+imageGroup+"]").get();
 

Here we are getting error and was not able to get all images with same attribute. After the long checking we have found that, the issue is due to the latest jquery files that we used. In latest jquery @ is not valid, so we have removed the @ from above code and it is working fine now. 

How to get all images with same rel attribute in JQuery

    
      TB_TempArray = $("a[rel="+imageGroup+"]").get();
 

We are hoping that someone may have great help fron this post, because we were spending so many time for resolving the issue.