Friday, July 25, 2008

Shiver down IT spine - Chain blasts in Bangalore public places

I think this could only be a warning of what is yet to happen. There can be no control if anyone decides to do this however this can only be prevented with the help of the public. This is nothing new to India or any in any states for that matter. Mumbai rose past these hurdles time and again. But the resilience they had is tremendous. Will bangalore too rise up to the occassion and stand tall against the social culprits who did these sabotages only time will tell. Telegraph reports..

Bangalore, July 25: Eight low-intensity blasts occurring in quick succession shook Bangalore today, killing a woman and wounding seven persons in the first serial bombings in India’s IT capital.

Left near pavement edges, bus stops and roadside walls, seven small bombs went off between 1.30pm and 2.15pm and an eighth around 5.30.
The first of them killed Sudha Ravi at a bus stop and injured her husband and four others. Union home minister Shivraj Patil said in Delhi that a second person had died of his injuries but Bangalore police denied this.
Although no group has claimed responsibility, the police suspect the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), many of whose activists were arrested on terror charges in recent months.
Police commissioner Shankar Bidari said each bomb contained explosives equal to “one or two grenades”, was packed with nuts, bolts and nails, and appeared to have been set off by a timer.
The timing has left the police puzzled. “It was a non-peak hour when the blasts occurred,” Bidari said. Six of the blasts had no casualties.
The terror strike, the first in Bangalore after gunmen killed a professor at an Indian Institute of Science seminar in December 2005, left the city panicky. Several IT firms, schools, colleges and cinemas closed quickly as the news hopped from mobile to mobile, leaving phone lines jammed.
“I was on my way to office when we heard a noise,” Arun Daniel told a TV channel. “It sounded like a cracker. The traffic was blocked, everyone was running around. It was not a severe blast.”
Police found gelatin sticks, mainly used in quarry operations, at one of the blast sites. Bomb experts said gelatin sticks and a concoction of ammonium nitrate in fuel oil had been used to cause at least two of the explosions.
One of them was the blast that killed Sudha. The bomb had been placed among shrubs behind a bus stop at Madiwala on Hosur Road.
The only other blast that caused casualties was the seventh. At 2.15, Ravindran and Ganesh were waiting to cross Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road when a bomb went off at a garden where they stood surrounded by lush green plants.
Three other blasts occurred on Hosur Road while the remaining three took place on Mysore Road, including the evening explosion near the Gopalan Mall bus stop, where the damage was limited to a private wall and the gutter below it.

One bomb went off in a gutter near the R.V. Engineering College bus stop that teems with students after 2.30pm, when the college closes. There were no students when the blast took place just after 2pm.

The police had a tough time clearing crowds at the blast sites. “Go back, please, there could be more bombs,” policemen were heard politely telling the crowds till they lost their patience and used lathis.

“Push the crowd back, they are trampling on forensic evidence,” Bidari yelled at his men as sniffer dogs and forensic experts searched for clues.

Karnataka police have in recent months made several arrests and claimed to have foiled terror attacks on the state secretariat, Infosys campuses in Bangalore and Mysore, and Hubli airport. Two Pakistanis were picked up in Mysore, a Kashmiri handicraft seller in Hampi and several Simi activists in Hubli.

The police later busted a Simi hideout in Bangalore and arrested two members, including one who worked for an IT company.

Simi is accused of carrying out a minor blast at a city church in 2001. The same day, a van carrying explosives blew up, killing two Simi activists, police say.

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