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Mystery blast kills two in Jalandhar

Mystery surrounds the bomb blast, which killed two persons and wounded three others in Jalandhar last night as police have so far failed to find any tangible evidence as to the nature of the explosion.

Senior superintendent of police Gaurav Yadav, who alongwith other officers examined the blast site last night and this morning, said no evidence of any iron or plastic splinter, no piece of any battery, detonator or any triggering device and not even fuse wire have been found on the site. But, he said, it was a "very loud explosion which was heard in a radius of at least 500 metres".

The SSP said no shrapnel could be found nor was there any sign of burns either on the bodies of those killed or wounded. However, the bodies were singed and carried soot. Soot was also found on the boundary wall, alongside which the wooden kiosk was located.

Yadav said it was an "odourless" blast. Eyewitnesses, including the wounded, however said there was a lot of smoke but no fire.

The police officer said that going by preliminary observation it was neither an incendiary device nor an acid-filled Molotov. It was not an improvised explosive device either.

He, however, was certain that it was some explosive material which blasted the wooden shack. Doctors in civil hospital, who conducted the autopsy on the bodies of Dinesh, a Nepali national, and Niranjan Das of nearby Helran village, said "wooden splinters were extracted from the bodies".

The splinters flew with such velocity that some pieces pierced a tin-encased water container. But strangely, the mangled mass of utensils in the wooden shack, used for vending tea and snacks, had no such holes. Three cycles also were reduced to a twisted mess.

The intensity of the blast could also be gauged from the fact that three fingers were found more than 30 metres from the blast site, across the central wedge of the road near Lamma Pind chowk.

Tattered pieces of clothes were strewn over the site and lay entangled in the overhead high tension transmission wire. The tarpaulin cover tied to the bamboo roof of the shack also was blown to smithereens, witnesses said.

The SSP said it was quite possible that the explosive was wrapped in cloth and a glass vial containing a small quantity of chemical was used as detonator to trigger the blast.

Yadav said forensic experts from the government lab at Chandigarh were on the way to examine the blast site.

UNI

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