Detonate? Good decision, said boss Operation | ||||||
| PRONAB MONDAL October 7, 2014 | ||||||
Burdwan, Oct. 6: The Burdwan police took the controversial decision to detonate a cache of home-made bombs after clearance from the top brass although some junior officers had tried to point out that hasty action would blow up evidence, The Telegraph has learnt. After the “accidental blast” that killed two people in a Burdwan flat, the district police had found gelatine sticks, 59 improvised explosive devices (home-made bombs) and 55 hand grenades. The police took the bombs and grenades to the banks of the Damodar, 3km away. The bomb disposal squad of the CID detonated the devices in controlled conditions in two phases on Thursday and Friday before officials of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) could turn up. Sources within the police told this newspaper that the approval for the detonation came from the director-general of police, G.M.P. Reddy. According to a senior police officer, Reddy sent a text message to Birbhum SP S.M.H. Meerza saying detonating the bombs would be a “good decision”. The DGP also advised the SP to be careful while detonating them. Neither Reddy nor Meerza were available to corroborate the disclosure made by the officer. Going by the account of the officer, it would appear that Reddy was responding to a query from Meerza, one of the officers transferred by the Election Commission following charges of favouring the ruling party in Bengal during the Lok Sabha polls. Bengal home secretary Basudeb Banerjee has already defended the detonation decision as the right one, saying the police stuck to the standard operating procedure. Opinion is divided on what exactly the standard operating procedure says. But several security veterans said the ground rule should be how to minimise casualties and maximise forensic evidence. If the team on the ground feels an explosion is imminent and lives are in danger, topmost priority should be given to controlled explosions so that loss of life can be averted. However, if the bomb disposal squad concludes that an attempt can be made to defuse or disarm the bombs — which will help preserve most of the physical evidence — that option should be preferred. By all accounts, it appears that no thought was given to disarming the bombs. The police say their SOP (standard operating procedure) demands detonation and there was no need to defuse the bombs. If the SOP indeed says so, the current controversy suggests that the procedure needs to be updated or the police should have used common sense to preserve evidence. No doubt the primary consideration of a bomb disposal squad is safety of human life. But, in this particular case, a crucial detail — the time of the detonations — suggests that there was no imminent risk of explosion. The “accidental blast” occurred around 10.45am on Thursday. The police reached the flat around noon. But the first phase of detonations started only at 4pm — that is, four hours after the police reached the flat. The detonations went on till 5pm. The exercise to blow up the bombs resumed next morning at 8.30 and the mission was accomplished by 10.30am on Friday. Which means, some of the bombs did not explode for almost 24 hours since the “accidental blast” — a wide window that suggests the devices were not activated or timed to explode. This piece of information indicates that SOP or not, the Bengal police could have safely waited for the NIA to arrive. The revelation assumes significance against the backdrop of a claim that the NIA had informed the district police on Thursday afternoon itself that it would visit the site the next day. “Someone identified himself as a superintendent of the NIA and wanted to know what happened. We shared all the information that was available at that moment,” said a police officer in Burdwan. But by the time the NIA team reached the site, all the bombs had been blown up. “The detonation is nothing short of tampering with evidence,” said an NIA source. The Burdwan police officer said: “Some officers did tell our superiors that we should wait for the NIA’s arrival. All of us know that the NIA steps in when suspected acts of terrorism occur. But once a nod from the DGP arrived, the IEDs were taken to the riverbank and were detonated in two phases.” According to him, all the senior officers in the hierarchy — the deputy inspector-general (Burdwan range), inspector-general of police (western range) and inspector-general of police (law and order) — knew about the decision to detonate the devices as well as the NIA’s plan to visit the site. “It was a collective decision,” a senior officer said. “The person who called up from the NIA didn’t ask us to preserve the IEDs,” another officer in the district police added but did not respond to a question whether it was not elementary to preserve as much crime evidence as possible. An NIA official said: “It is not clear what prompted them to detonate the bombs. Had they not done so, we could have tried to zero in on the terror outfit by assessing the IEDs…. Different groups follow their own methods and leave telltale signs.” |
Burdwan blast: Security agencies on the lookout for 2 suspects as Mamata govt admits to terror link
The Mamata Banerjee government on Monday came around to concede that last Thursday's accidental bomb blast in Burdwan involved al-Qaida linked Bangladeshi terrorist organization, Jamaat ul Mujahideen.
KOLKATA: The CID is on the lookout for two suspects Kausar and Abdul Kalam Sheikh in connection with the Burdwan blast case in which two suspected militants were killed and another person was injured on October 2 in Bengal.
Kausar is suspected to be a regular at the house in Khagragarh were the blast took place.
The CID is also searching for one Abul Kalam, a resident of Mangalkote area of the district.
The investigators are on his trail after they found seven calls made to him from a mobile phone immediately after the blast.
READ ALSO
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The mobile phone from which the calls were made was seized by the police from the house after the explosion.
"From the video clips that were recovered from the mobile, several footages of attack on World Trade Center, lectures on Jihad and other training modules were recovered," a senior CID officer said.
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(A police sketch of one of the militants killed in Burdwan)
Three people, including two women, have been arrested so far in this connection.
Those arrested include Hafez Mollah alias Hasan who was picked up by the CID from his house at Khar Duttapa in Purbostholi.
On the basis of information gathered from Hafez Mollah, the police released a sketch of the prime suspect who is based in Bangladesh.
The sketch has been sent to all the police stations of Burdwan and nearby districts and railway stations to nab him, CID officers said.
The CID officers said that the mastermind behind the blast visited the house a couple of days before the blast to prepare a blue print of subversive activities.
Mamata govt admits to terror link
The Mamata Banerjee government on Monday came around to concede that last Thursday's accidental bomb blast in Burdwan involved al-Qaida linked Bangladeshi terrorist organization, Jamaat ul Mujahideen, even as it struggled to fend off pressure from political opponents to let National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe the explosions.
The changed stance encouraged BJP and CPM to step up their criticism of the state government.
Arguing that the state government cannot be trusted to conduct a fair probe, CPM's Amal Haldar sought the immediate removal of Burdwan SP, S M H Meerza, and a probe against him.
BJP went a step further and demanded that the investigation be handed over to the NIA.
"The blast is an act of terror and it has implications on international and national security. The state should hand over the investigations to NIA. The Centre will put pressure on the state to hand over the investigation," BJP general secretary Siddharth Nath Singh told agencies. He said it is a matter of national security — an aspect which should not be neglected for narrow political interests of TMC.
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NIA Act does allow the Centre to suo motu hand over investigation into any "scheduled" offence to the agency, but the provision has not been invoked so far.
This did not seem to deter the BJP which has expressed the apprehension that state agencies might cover up the case. "Why is the Trinamool Congress government not handing over the probe to NIA? The delay is raising serious questions of cover-up. BJP demands that investigation be handled by NIA and no other agency," Singh said.
Alleging that links of a senior police officer in Burdwan with TMC were "very well known", Singh said he had been transferred by the Election Commission just before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and chief minister Mamata Banerjee had promised to bring him back to the same position after the elections, which she did.
"Has the TMC regime used its favourite officer to destroy evidence and cover up the role of a section of TMC leaders in anti-national activities?" Singh asked.
Both BJP and CPM have based their allegations on the alleged keenness of the state government to underplay the explosions during Durga Puja festivities despite overwhelming evidence that those could not have been the handiwork of ordinary criminals. Scores of bombs, hand grenades and gelatine sticks were recovered from the house which, it seems, functioned as the bomb-assembling unit for al-Qaida linked Bangladesh's terror outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.
(With inputs from PTI)
Kausar is suspected to be a regular at the house in Khagragarh were the blast took place.
The CID is also searching for one Abul Kalam, a resident of Mangalkote area of the district.
The investigators are on his trail after they found seven calls made to him from a mobile phone immediately after the blast.
READ ALSO
Crucial evidence in Burdwan blast 'destroyed'
TMC against NIA probe into Burdwan blast
The mobile phone from which the calls were made was seized by the police from the house after the explosion.
"From the video clips that were recovered from the mobile, several footages of attack on World Trade Center, lectures on Jihad and other training modules were recovered," a senior CID officer said.
(A police sketch of one of the militants killed in Burdwan)
Three people, including two women, have been arrested so far in this connection.
Those arrested include Hafez Mollah alias Hasan who was picked up by the CID from his house at Khar Duttapa in Purbostholi.
On the basis of information gathered from Hafez Mollah, the police released a sketch of the prime suspect who is based in Bangladesh.
The sketch has been sent to all the police stations of Burdwan and nearby districts and railway stations to nab him, CID officers said.
The CID officers said that the mastermind behind the blast visited the house a couple of days before the blast to prepare a blue print of subversive activities.
Mamata govt admits to terror link
The Mamata Banerjee government on Monday came around to concede that last Thursday's accidental bomb blast in Burdwan involved al-Qaida linked Bangladeshi terrorist organization, Jamaat ul Mujahideen, even as it struggled to fend off pressure from political opponents to let National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe the explosions.
The changed stance encouraged BJP and CPM to step up their criticism of the state government.
Arguing that the state government cannot be trusted to conduct a fair probe, CPM's Amal Haldar sought the immediate removal of Burdwan SP, S M H Meerza, and a probe against him.
BJP went a step further and demanded that the investigation be handed over to the NIA.
"The blast is an act of terror and it has implications on international and national security. The state should hand over the investigations to NIA. The Centre will put pressure on the state to hand over the investigation," BJP general secretary Siddharth Nath Singh told agencies. He said it is a matter of national security — an aspect which should not be neglected for narrow political interests of TMC.
NIA Act does allow the Centre to suo motu hand over investigation into any "scheduled" offence to the agency, but the provision has not been invoked so far.
This did not seem to deter the BJP which has expressed the apprehension that state agencies might cover up the case. "Why is the Trinamool Congress government not handing over the probe to NIA? The delay is raising serious questions of cover-up. BJP demands that investigation be handled by NIA and no other agency," Singh said.
Alleging that links of a senior police officer in Burdwan with TMC were "very well known", Singh said he had been transferred by the Election Commission just before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and chief minister Mamata Banerjee had promised to bring him back to the same position after the elections, which she did.
"Has the TMC regime used its favourite officer to destroy evidence and cover up the role of a section of TMC leaders in anti-national activities?" Singh asked.
Both BJP and CPM have based their allegations on the alleged keenness of the state government to underplay the explosions during Durga Puja festivities despite overwhelming evidence that those could not have been the handiwork of ordinary criminals. Scores of bombs, hand grenades and gelatine sticks were recovered from the house which, it seems, functioned as the bomb-assembling unit for al-Qaida linked Bangladesh's terror outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen.
(With inputs from PTI)
http://m.timesofindia.com/india/Burdwan-blast-Security-agencies-on-the-lookout-for-2-suspects-as-Mamata-govt-admits-to-terror-link/articleshow/44583630.cms