LUCKNOW: Three persons were dead and scores injured following a massive blast at a house being used as an illegal godown of firecrackers in a village under Kakori police station on Lucknow outskirts on Monday. While two adjacent buildings collapsed under the impact of the blast, another under-construction
structure came down crashing.
The blast occurred at around 11 am in the basement of a house where explosives and other material used in making the firecrackers were stored. While a police team rushed to spot to undertake a probe and ensure rescue and relief operations to extricate those trapped in the debris, ATS officials later joined the
police team, inspected the site to ascertain the reasons of the blast and the type of explosive.
As per the police sources, the explosives were of very high intensity but the ATS sleuths ruled out any terror angle. However, there was huge cloud of smoke which was billowing from the house in which
the blast occurred and it continued for many hours. While the two of three, who fell victim to blast, were identified as Ram Sharan (35), and Nasreen (18), the third one could not be identified as the body was burnt beyond recognition in the explosion.
The injured included Ram Prasad (37) of Bahraich, Lal Babu (25) and Vinod (21) of Lakhimpur Kheri.
According to police sources, the house in which the blast took place was owned by Sanjay Lodhi who had rented it out to one Nasir of Faridpur.
Nasir was a firecracker manufacturer. On hearing a deafening sound, the villagers rushed to the site of explosion only to find body parts of those dead strewed in the periphery of 100 metres and also heard screams of some residents living in the houses adjacent to the blast site.
However, soon after the police party reached the site, force from other police stations including Maal, Malihabad and Para was called in.
While the injured were admitted to CHC in Kakori for treatment, Nasir’s son Musheer was rounded up by the cops. As per the police sources, Mushir revealed to the cops during his interrogation that Nasir
was running a firecracker manufacturing unit from the basement of the house and he was working along with his daughter Nasreen on the fateful morning.
While teams of Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS), Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) Lucknow and Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) had collected samples from the site of blast for further probe into the incident and the nature of explosives.
However, sources also claimed that Nasir was storing explosives on the site despite his license for manufacturing crackers had already expired.
Luckow SSP Deepak Kumar said that the samples would be sent to FSL Agra for test.