No outfit had claimed responsibility for the blasts that were set off on a day when BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi addressed a series of public meetings in southern Andhra Pradesh which shares a border with Tamil Nadu. The strike also came within 48 hours of the city police arresting a suspected ISI agent from Sri Lanka.
The explosives went off at 7.15am in compartments S4 and S5 of the train (No. 12509), 10 minutes after it pulled into platform 9 at Chennai Central. The train had arrived around 90 minutes behind schedule. An investigator with a central agency said that two individuals who boarded the train without tickets had alighted before the train reached Chennai, but local investigators refused to confirm this.
The blasts killed Swati Paruchuri, 24, an employee of TCS, Bangalore, who was heading home to Guntur, and left Sadan Chandan Dharman, 64, from Tripura, and an unidentified man severely injured. Railway police admitted the two men and 12 others to Government General Hospital, across the road from the railway station.
One of the blasts blew open a 30-cm-wide hole in the floor of the S4 coach and a similar hole in the S5 bogie and damaged seats nearby. Blood spatter covered parts of the compartments where bombs appeared to have been planted.
Modi on Thursday addressed rallies at Madanapalli, Nellore, Guntur, Bhimavaram and Visakhapatnam, all venues except Bhimavaram on the route of the Guwahati Express. Modi was also scheduled to visit the Srikalahasti Temple, 118km from the city, later in the day.
Preliminary reports suggest the bombs were kept in two bags under seat numbers 70 of the S4 coach and 28 (S5). Preliminary analysis suggested that the bomb-makers used a concoction of explosives, including ammonium nitrate, and filled them with ball bearings and nails to maximise the effect of the blasts, investigating officers from the Crime Branch CID (CB-CID) said.
A member of the bomb disposal squad said search teams had recovered a tattered red bag with trace remains of the explosive. They said evidence from the site indicated that the bombers used timer devices to trigger the blasts. Investigators said the make of the bomb and the modus operandi suggested that terror outfit Al-Umma or Indian Mujahideen could be responsible for the attack.
CB-CID police have picked up two suspects from among the passengers but let them off after questioning. Thursday's blasts were the first terror strike in Chennai in almost 21 years. Al-Umma activists had in August 1993 set off bombs at the RSS state head office in Chintadripet, killing 11 people and injuring seven.
Some reports from New Delhi said Tamil Nadu refused to accept assistance in the probe from central agencies and handed over the probe to the CB-CID wing of the state police. Officers of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and a team of investigators from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the National Security Guard (NSG) arrived at the blast site nonetheless, discussed details of the blast with CB-CID officers and collected evidence from the spot.
Southern Railway additional general manager K Vijayakumaran said checks against the train manifest showed that the all passengers had been accounted for. "None of the injured boarded the train from Chennai," he said. "They all boarded either from Bangalore or from stations on the way to Chennai. "Among the injured were also three or four people with unreserved tickets."
Director general of police (elections) Anoop Jaiswal said no terror outfit had claimed responsibility for the attack. Investigators had not yet arrived at any conclusion, Tamil Nadu DGP (law and order) K Ramanujam said.
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