The incidents of crude bomb blasts continue in TMC-ruled West Bengal. In a latest such incident, two boys were critically injured when a bomb kept in their maternal grandparent’s house exploded yesterday. The grandfather, who is a TMC member, has been arrested on the charges of making bombs.
The horrific incident took place on Friday in Ekdala village under Margram police station in Birbhum district. The two boys, named Rohan Sheikh and Sohan Sheikh, were visiting their grandparent’s house and playing in an abandoned house owned by the grandfather Jamirul Islam. At around 11 AM on Friday, an explosion took place in the house, gravely injuring the two boys.
Both the boys suffered severe burns due to the blast, and they also suffered injuries from splinters. They were first admitted at to the Rampurhat Medical College Hospital, and from there they were referred to Burdwan Medical College Hospital.
Jamirul Islam has two daughters, one of whom is married in the same village while the other has been married to a man in Govinapur gram. Rohan Sheikh and Sohan Sheikh are the sons of the two sisters. Both the kids had arrived in the maternal grandparent’s house some days ago.
The police registered a case after the incident and arrested Jamirul Islam. The police also cordoned off Jamirul’s house after the explosion. Jamirul has been booked under the Explosive Substance Act and various relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
“A case has been lodged and the house owner has been arrested. We have started an investigation as to what exactly happened and what kind of explosives were involved,” Superintendent of Police (SP) Nagendra Nath Tripathi said. Police said that Jamirul had stocked bombs in the house.
However, Jamirul denied that there were crude bombs in the house, and claimed that it was firecrackers. He claimed that firecrackers were stocked in the house for an upcoming wedding, and these firecrackers exploded accidentally when the boys were playing. The mother of one of the boys also made the same claim.
Jamirul Islam added that he had asked the boys to not play neat the firecrackers but they didn’t listen to him. When a journalist asked how firecrackers can cause such huge damage, he said it it was a box of firecrackers that exploded together. On the other hand, another family member claimed that it was a gas cylinder explosion.
However, locals and police suspect their version due to the nature of the explosion and the fact that the boys were hit by splinters. Seeing the damage to the house caused by the explosion, they say that it can’t be firecrackers. One police officer said that the explosion was caused by an improvised bomb and not by firecrackers.
It is notable that after the Bogtui massacre in March this year, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had ordered the police to recover bombs and firearms stocked in the state. While police had recovered substantial amounts of explosives, bomb blasts continue to take place in the state, many times accidentally in the houses where they are made and stored.
