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Pulakeshinagar blast: Bengaluru police probe possible IED as NIA seeks reports
A blast at an under-construction building in Bengaluru's Pulakeshinagar on 20 October injured two workers. Police are examining a parcel account and a battery theory, and the NIA has asked for the investigation reports. The cause is not yet confirmed.
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4 min
A blast at an under-construction building in Bengaluru's Pulakeshinagar has brought in the city police, the Anti-Terrorism Cell and now the National Investigation Agency, but the cause has not been established and the accounts of how it happened still differ.
The explosion took place at around 2.30 pm on Tuesday, 20 October, at a five-storey building that is still being built. Two workers were injured. One has reportedly been discharged from hospital, and the other was still being treated when the first reports came out. The Pulakeshinagar police have registered a case. The injured men have been named differently in different accounts, so they are not named here.
Two accounts of the parcel
The central question is how the device, if it was one, reached the building. One account, based on the early stage of the investigation, says a security guard at the site received an anonymous call asking him to take in a parcel. He is said to have followed the instruction, and the guard and a painter then tried to open it, at which point it exploded. Police are trying to find out who sent the parcel, how it arrived and why the guard was asked to accept it.
The Bengaluru Police Commissioner, Seemanth Kumar Singh, has said something different. He has said the incident was not linked to a parcel and that, as a preliminary explanation, the blast may have happened when someone tried to switch on a battery. Investigators are also looking at whether three batteries set off the explosion, but how they were connected and whether any other components were involved has not been confirmed. These are early leads, not findings, and the two accounts have not been reconciled. They are not necessarily opposed, since a battery can be the trigger of a device that arrived in a box, and the commissioner's remark may refer only to the trigger. Only the forensic report can settle it.
What the investigation has done so far
Teams from the Anti-Terrorism Cell, scene-of-crime officers, forensic experts and a bomb disposal unit inspected the site and collected samples. The seized materials have been sent for forensic examination, and the results are awaited. Police have questioned the owner of the building, which does not by itself suggest any wrongdoing. Five special teams have been formed, and footage from more than 100 CCTV cameras in the area has been checked to trace the movements of the person who delivered the object.
Forensic examiners in such cases usually look at the residue left at the spot, the remains of any circuit, switch or battery, and the packaging, to work out what the device was made of and how it was set off. That work takes time, and a first report that says only that an explosion occurred is different from one that says an improvised explosive device was used. Police have so far described the second as a possibility.
The NIA has asked Bengaluru Police for its investigation reports. It will go through the forensic findings and the scene-of-crime evidence before deciding whether to take a bigger role in the case. No motive has been established, and no link to a wider conspiracy has been confirmed. Authorities have not publicly confirmed an improvised explosive device or a terror angle, and the presence of anti-terror teams at a scene is routine in cases like this and should not be read as proof of either.
The state's Home Minister has urged people not to speculate and has said that laboratory reports are needed to establish the cause. That is the practical position for now: until the forensic report is in, the words "IED" and "terror" describe a line of inquiry and not a conclusion.
What to watch for next
Three things will settle most of the open questions. The first is the forensic report, which should say what exploded and what triggered it. The second is the trail of the anonymous call, because the call records and the CCTV footage should show whether a parcel was really delivered and by whom. The third is whether the NIA formally takes over the investigation, which would normally mean it has found reason to treat the blast as more than a local crime. The agency can take up a case only when the central government hands it over under the NIA Act, and offences under the Explosive Substances Act are among those the Act covers.
For residents and for people who work on construction sites, the sensible rule is the usual one. An unexpected parcel, or an instruction from an unknown caller to accept one, should not be opened. It should be left where it is and reported to the police.
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4 min
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