GUWAHATI: At least four persons, including a woman, were injured in a bomb blast near Sukreswar Ghat on the bank of the Brahmaputra at Panbazar here on Saturday.
The anti-talks ULFA (Independent) claimed responsibility for the blast. Its ‘commander-in-chief’, Paresh Baruah, told a local television channel here on telephone that the explosion was intended to target Bengali-speaking organisations opposing the NRC updating process.
The fugitive rebel leader said the site of the blast was not the intended “target” and it was due to “technical reasons” that the explosive went off at the Brahmaputra riverfront.
Only three days are left for Durga Puja, the biggest festival of the Bengalis.
Baruah 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.
The injured persons have been identified as Shanku Das, Binita Das, Taifuddin Ahmed and Kalpajyoti Taluldar, all pedestrians. Binita lost all fingers of one of her hands. All the injured were rushed to Mahendra Mohan Choudhury Hospital in the vicinity of the blast site.
Senior city police officials, including Commissioner Pradip Saloi, rushed to the site that was cordoned off. Explosives experts of Assam police were at work to find what kind of explosive materials were used in the device. A boundary wall on the pavement and a car were damaged.
However, a PTI report said quoting the ULFA leader that the blast was carried out by the outfit in protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and NRC updating exercise.
He alleged that the NRC would be used to settle non-Assamese people in the state.
The complete draft NRC was published in July this year with 2.9 crore names in which over 40 lakh people were left out from the document.
