Although three days have passed, the blast sites at Dilsukhnagar continue to attract people in large numbers. On Thursday night itself, when the explosions occurred, scores of people thronged the place, exposing the city police’s inability to cordon off the area to avoid losing evidence.
Senior officials apprehend that there could be another explosive hidden nearby and people should not go near the blast site.
But what happened in the aftermath was that people kept pouring in and very much accessed the sites and even fooled around to look at the remains of the blast.
Passersby parked their bikes and ran to see what had happened. Clearly, for more than an hour, the media was able to telecast the scenes from a close range, indicating that little had been done to seal off the two places where the explosions took place.
While endangering their own lives, the visiting public may have also damaged the site, thereby losing evidence, police officials said.
“The local police came 10 minutes after the blast. It was people who shifted the bodies initially. The place was so swarmed by scores of curious onlookers that ambulances could not enter,” said K Sirish, owner of KK Arcade, the place where the second blast took place.
“It could not be helped because people came to the rescue of the injured. But the public must be educated to stay away from the scene for erasing evidence since, in most cases of terror attacks, the evidence is found near the blast site,” said a senior police official.
Eyewitnesses said many passersby had access to both the blast sites for quite a while until the police cordoned off the area. That raises the question as to how far the evidence has been damaged or tampered with. In the pandemonium that prevailed at the first site, which was not sealed off till 7.45 pm, a number of people stepped on the pools of blood that remained.
Dress Code, one of the shops in front of which the first bomb exploded, had its owner and workers clearing up the mess till 7 45 pm. Many of the workers at the scene of the first blast were seen stepping near and on the blood stains, without actually realising that they were erasing the evidence.