A BRUSH WITH TERROR

POLICE BELIEVE THE BLAST SUSPECTS MAY HAVE HAD THE SUPPORT OF TERROR MODULES IN DARBHANGA AND NEPAL

- Amitabh Srivastava

A parcel of readymade garments exploded and caught fire at the Darbhanga railway station in Bihar on June 17, soon after it had been offloaded from the Secunderabad-Darbhanga Express. Investigations showed the consignment had been booked in Secunderabad on June 15 in the name of Mohd. Sufiyaan, who the police believe works overseas, by forging his identity documents.

An examination of the explosives used in the IED (improvised explosive device) blast revealed the plot. Police sources say a glass bottle containing two lethal blasting agents, colloquially known as ‘blasting oils’, had been packed inside the parcel. A piece of hard cardboard—placed as a separator between the chemicals—was supposed to give way within the first few hours of the train journey, triggering a powerful explosion on the moving train. Luckily, some of the chemicals had leaked into the newspapers used to wrap the bottle and the garments, reducing the intensity of the blast at the Darbhanga station. No loss of life or injuries to people was reported.

Police sources say a similar botch-up in handling explosives by operatives behind the July 2013 serial blasts near the Mahabodhi temple in Bodh Gaya had saved many lives. The IEDs, they say, had been planted vertically, instead of horizontally, reducing the sideways impact of the explosions. Otherwise, the IEDs were so powerful that one of them, placed under a bus, had left a huge crater in the ground while ripping through the vehicle’s floor and blowing off a part of its roof.