Trinamool councillor arrested after bomb goes off in illegally occupied flat

A Trinamool Congress councillor from Titagarh town municipality in West Bengal's North 24-Parganas district was arrested on Monday, hours after a bomb went off in his flat in a multi-storied building, causing substantial damage to the property, police said.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Md Riyazuddin, the ruling party's councillor from Ward No 4 in Titagarh town, was arrested in the afternoon along with two of his associates. A case was registered after the bomb blew off the outer wall of the fifth-floor flat in the morning. The debris landed on a nearby shanty damaging its tin roof. Cracks developed on the walls of the adjacent flats, but the residents did not suffer any injury, police said.

"The explosion was quite powerful according to local people. Experts will visit the spot and check what sort of explosive was kept there," Indra Badan Jha, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Central), Barrackpore, told the media.