LUCKNOW: Two persons, believably a couple, were dead and scores injured following a powerful blast in an illegal crackers godown in Kakori, the mango belt of Lucknow, here on Monday. The blast, which took place in a series of three houses in Jehta road under Kakori police station area, was so powerful that the body parts of the dead strewed in the periphery of 100 metres of the site, said the sources. A number of persons were reported to be trapped under the debris.
The intensity of the explosion, which took place around 11 am, could be gauged by the fact that the walls of adjacent houses received cracks.
While a police, forensic team and senior administrative officials rushed to the spot and a probe was initiated to ascertain the reasons for the explosion, rescue and relief work was underway. Two JCBs were deployed by the administration to clear the debris and extricate the people beneath it.
As per Senior Superintendent of Police Deepak Kumar, the house in which the blast occurred belonged to Sanjay Lodhi who had rented it out to one Nasir of Faridpur. He along with his son Musheer used to run an illegal crackers factory there. However, at the time of the blast, Nasir and his wife were present in the house. The villagers claimed that Nasir had died in the blast, there was no trace of his wife who was also present in the house at the time of the explosion.
As per the local sources, the building in which the blast took place had explosives stored in its basement. The building came down crashing brick-by-brick after the explosion.
It is believed that both Nasir and Musheer deal are cracker manufacturers. They own a plot along river Gomti in Kakori where they used to manufacture the crackers and would store them in the basement of the building where the blast occurred. Moreover, the villagers claimed that Nasir used to store the raw material and explosives for crackers in the basement godown and used to supply this explosive to other cracker manufactures in the adjoining villages.