An explosive device kept in a motorcycle in the parking lot of a police station went off in Pune on Thursday, injuring three persons, including a constable.
It was a “low intensity” blast and police are probing the case keeping in mind “all possibilities”, including a terror angle, said Pune Police Commissioner Satish Mathur.
“We are examining all possibilities,” he said when asked if police suspected it to be a terror attack.
The Centre, meanwhile, declined to term the blast in Pune as a terror act, saying it was only a “minor” explosion.
“It was a minor blast. Why do you think it could be a terror act?” Union Home Secretary Anil Goswami said when asked whether the Pune blast was a terror attack.
Goswami said the Director General of Maharashtra Police has briefed him about the explosion and the situation there.
Home Minister RR Patil said there was no need to panic and people should not listen to rumours. He appealed to all to cooperate with the authorities.
According to the Pune Police Commissioner, a scooter parked adjacent to the motorbike in which the device was placed too was damaged.
Ball bearings and nails have been recovered from the spot and sent for forensic examination, he said, adding the explosive use in the blast was yet to be identified.
Those wounded, he said, had received minor injuries and included a constable. Only one of them needed hospitalisation, he said.
The Pharaskhana police station is situated in the vicinity of the famous Dagdusheth Ganesh temple, which is said to be on the terrorists’ radar for quite some time.
A suspected Indian Mujahideen operative Qateel Siddiqui, named in three terror cases, was alleged to have made an abortive attempt to bomb the Dagdusheth temple in 2010.
The 26-year-old was strangled to death in high-security Yerawada Central Jail here in June 2012.
Police have cordoned off the area and appealed to the people not to spread or believe rumours.
Pune was rocked by four coordinated low-intensity explosions on August 01, 2012 which had left one person injured.
The city had come on the terrorists’ radar for the first time when 17 people were killed and around 60 injured in a powerful blast at German Bakery, one of Pune’s favourite eateries, on February 13, 2010.
Home-grown terror outfit Indian Mujahideen was blamed for both the attacks.
