Victims
Among the victims were seven students from 'Amritwahini' college at Sangamner in Ahmednagar District in Maharashtra. A group of 45 students, who were visiting Hyderabad on a routine industrial tour, were enjoying the show at Lumbini Park Laserium when the auditorium was struck by the devastating explosion. The group was accompanied by four faculty members. [3] Bodies of five of the students arrived at the Pune airport on 26 August afternoon and was received at the airport by a large crowd.Suspected perpetrators
Central security agencies said that the banned Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami (Huji) militant outfit from Bangladesh was possibly behind the twin blasts. It was suspected that Shahid and Bilal, who were the masterminds of the Mecca masjid blast were also behind Saturday's explosion. Shahid is reported to be in Karachi and is instrumental in recruiting people for arms training from Hyderabad. Shahid Ilyas Bilal, who is also linked to the Mecca Masjid attacks is a high-ranking Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who has lately been working with HuJi.[7][8]
The government of Andhra Pradesh blamed terrorist groups based in Bangladesh and Pakistan for the two blasts. After an emergency meeting of the state cabinet, Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters that "the available information points to the involvement of international terrorist organisations in Bangladesh and Pakistan".[9]
Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh told PTI that 42 people died and 54 were injured in the attacks. As investigators searched for clues, an expert said the explosives used in yesterday's blasts and the Mecca Masjid attack were different. "In the Mecca Masjid blasts, it was a RDX and TNT mixture...here it is entirely different (as some) ammonium nitrate-based chemical (was used)," said T Suresh, chief scientific officer of the CLUES bomb detection squad.[9]
On August 26, Foreign Affairs Adviser of Bangladesh Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, rejected the claim of Bangladesh link with these bombings, describing them as 'baseless'[10].
Unexploded bombs
A day after the blasts, police discovered 19 unexploded bombs — most fitted with timers and placed in plastic bags — at bus stops, by cinemas, road junctions and pedestrian bridges and near a public water fountain across Hyderabad. [11]
Reactions
| “ | Such vicious attacks prove that cities like Hyderabad and Bangalore, emerging icons of a vibrant nation, are firmly in the cross-hairs of terror groups which have made India a country with perhaps the highest number of civilian victims of terror (leaving aside war-torn countries like Iraq). – Times of India.[8] | ” |
President Pratibha Patil, Vice President Hamid Ansari and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the Hyderabad blasts and expressed shock over the loss of innocent lives. [12]
In the light of the twin bomb blasts in Hyderabad, eminent forensic scientist P. Chandra Sekharan has urged the Government of India to establish a “National Explosives Control Bureau (NECB)” on the lines of the Narcotics Control Bureau.[13]
India has since 2004 lost more lives to terrorist incidents than all of North America, South America, Central America, Europe and Eurasia put together. [14]
| “ | Many in India’s strategic community fear that the bombings in Hyderabad — the first major strike directed at non-Muslim civilians since the Mumbai serial bombings of 2006 — mean that Islamist terror groups have broken their shackles. They have little doubt that General Musharraf’s domestic travails have strengthened pro-jihad hawks in Pakistan — a trend reflected in the unusually high level of infiltration across the Line of Control this summer. – Editorial in The Hindu. |
