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An Improvised Explosive Device that exploded inside the toilet of the district court complex in Mysuru Monday was packed in a three-litre Murugan brand pressure cooker and contained a mixture of potassium chlorate and gunpowder as explosives, preliminary investigations have revealed. Two people were injured in the blast. The Karnataka Police is viewing the blast as an act of terrorism.
The IED, investigators said, was triggered by a battery-powered timer attached to a bulb filament, which transmitted heat to the explosives at the designated time to trigger the blast. The device, however, did not contain shrapnel, said multiple sources from state and central agencies familiar with the probe.
“Though there was no serious damage, the blast in the Mysuru court complex is a source of concern because a certain level of sophisticated bomb making knowledge has been demonstrated,’’ said an intelligence source.
Sources in the police said that “setting the timer on such a device is not an easy task. It needs a certain amount of practice if accidents are to be avoided”.
Under the police scanner are similarities with the modus operandi involved in two other recent blasts in court premises in southern India — one that occurred on April 7 in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh and another that occurred on June 15 in Kollam, Kerala. No death was reported in both explosions, but some people were injured.
After the Chittoor court blast, a letter was received on April 20 by the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes there in which an outfit called the Base Movement had claimed responsibility for the blast.
The letter in Urdu, which was posted in Chennai, also contained a picture of the slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
Intelligence agencies believe that the letter was sent by a former cadre of the Al Ummah,which is a proscribed terrorist outfit in Tamil Nadu and has started calling itself the Base Movement after allying with the al-Qaeda.
The Karnataka Police have now contacted their counterparts in Andhra to seek details of the Chittoor blast probe.
The Kerala Police SIT that has been probing the Kollam court blast has also, according to reports, indicated the involvement of Al Ummah, under the name of “Base Movement’’, in the June 15 blast.
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In January, the French embassy in Bengaluru had received a letter from the “Base Movement’’ ahead of a visit to India by French President Francois Hollande demanding that the visit be scrapped. “The letter was posted in the Velachery area in south Chennai. It was posted in the name of al-Qaeda… Our team… found it to be a fake address,” an officer had stated then.
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