GUWAHATI: At least four persons including a woman were injured in a bomb blast that occurred near Sukreswar Ghat on the bank of Brahmaputra River at Panbazar in the heart of the city around Saturday noon, just a couple of days before the beginning of Durga Puja festival.
The injured were identified as Shanku Das, Binita Das, Taifuddin Ahmed and Kalpajyoti Taluldar. Binita Das has lost the fingers of one of her hands in the impact of the blast. All them were rushed to Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital in the vicinity of the blast site. All the injured were passersby who were walking on the pavement near in front of Sukreswar Ghat.
Senior city police officials including Police Commissioner Pradip Saloi rushed to the spot along with police personnel rushed to the spot to cordon off the area where explosives experts of Assam Police were at work to find out the kind of explosive materials used in the device. A boundary wall on the pavement and a car were damaged in the blast.
Meanwhile, the anti-talks faction of the ULFA, the ULFA(Independent) or ULFA(I), has claimed responsibility for the blast that rocked the Brahmaputra riverfront at Fancy Bazaar in Guwahati around noon on Saturday. The ULFA (I) ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Baruah told a local TV channel here over telephone that the explosion was intended to target Bengali-speaking organisations opposing the NRC updating process.
The fugitive ULFA(I) leader further said that the place where the blast took place was also not the intended “target” and it was due to some “technical reasons” that the explosive went off at the Brahmaputra riverfront at Fancy Bazaar.
He also expressed regret at “innocent people” getting injured in the explosion and warned individuals, groups and organisations opposing the NRC updating process to desist from carrying out any anti-Assam campaign.