Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar on Thuesday said there was no specific information or alert “from anybody” about the bomb blast near the BJP office that left 16 persons injured.
Speaking to reporters after visiting the injured persons at government-run K C General Hospital here, he maintained that there was no intelligence failure.
Shettar said the government had taken all steps required and beefed up the security in sensitive areas across the state.
Reacting to allegations by some Congress leaders that the bomb blast was a handiwork of “saffron” terrorists to gain sympathy for the ruling BJP, Shettar said the opposition should desist from giving a political colour to the incident.
“It will not be in a good taste.” “Leaders should not politicise the incident, especially when investigations are on. The perpetrators will be known and would be in public domain soon. Until then, I appeal to them not to give a political colour to the issue,” he said.
The state government has decided to give compensation to the injured and those whose houses and properties have been damaged, the Chief Minister said.
“The government will bear medical expenses of the injured,” he added.
After visiting the blast site last night, Shettar had said he suspected that the perpetrators of terror wanted to spread fear among the people by planting an explosive near the BJP office.
Asked if the explosion was targeted at BJP, Shettar had said he did not want to give a political colour, but going by the incident “I suspect that it was so.” 16 people, including 11 policemen, were injured in the blast on Wednesday opposite to BJP office, which the government has termed as a “clear act of terror.”
Meanwhile, sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the city police crime branch on Thursday intensified search for clues to the blast here a day earlier in which 16 people were injured.
“Our special teams are coordinating with the NIA investigators and forensic experts for vital clues from the blast site to ascertain the nature of explosives used in triggering the blast and who were behind it,” a senior police official told IANS but declined to share details.
Based on the evidence collected from the remnants of the gutted motorcycle and two cars from the blast site, forensic experts suspect chemicals like ammonium nitrate might have been used in the explosive and a timer to trigger it.
“We have got some leads from the preliminary investigation that point to use of a battery-operated timer device to trigger the explosion as we found remains of lithium and alkaline cells at the blast site,” the official said.
As no shrapnel, nails or ball-bearings were found in the wreckage, experts doubt the use of improvised explosive device (IED) in the blast.
“We are also scanning the footage from the cameras and closed circuit television (CCTV) installed outside the BJP’s state unit office to identify two persons who parked the motorbike between two cars and loitered before the incident. As the blast site is at a distance from the party office, the cameras could not capture the images clearly in the footage,” the official pointed out. (Agencies)