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Serial blasts rock Delhi, 60 killed
by Maya Singh/Ashok Dixit

     New Delhi: A series of blasts rocked busy shopping markets in New Delhi on Saturday evening, three days ahead of Diwali, the festival of lights. Unconfirmed reports said that at least 60 people were killed and many injured in the explosions. Thirty-four of the 60 deaths reportedly took place in the Sarojini Nagar shopping locality of South Delhi. Other major blast took place in Paharganj market area, close to New Delhi railway station in Central Delhi, where there is a concentration of foreign backpackers. The injured are being treated at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and the Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Hospital. Among those injured were some foreigners, who have after being administered preliminary first aid, managed to get back to their hotel rooms. A red alert has been sounded across the Indian capital and police have deployed additional forces as a precautionary measure and are conducting searches at busy market places and malls around the National Capital Region (NCR). The public has been urged to remain calm and not to visit crowded markets. The police also said that they suspected the hand of the militant Lashkar-e-Toiba in the blasts.

     The first blast took place in the main bazaar of Paharganj near the New Delhi Railway Station at around 5:30 p.m. Indian Standard Time. At 6:05 p.m., the second explosion took place in south Delhi's busy Sarojini Nagar market. Another blast took place in Govindpuri inside a bus. A fourth bomb was defused by the bomb disposal squad in Old Delhi's Chandni Chowk area. Police have said that at least 25 people have been killed in the Paharganj blast. According to eyewitnesses, scores of people have been injured in the explosion. In the Govindpuri explosion, three persons have been killed.

     The markets were filled with shoppers doing their last-minute purchases for Diwali ' the festival of lights. Ranvir, a hawker in Paharganj, said: "I was about to set up my roadside stall, when the blast occurred. I saw ten people dying in front of my eyes, including women and children. Three of the children had their heads blown off in the blast." Social activist Jasvir Singh said: "I reached the venue of blast five minutes after it had occurred and there was blood all over. The smoke around the area confused me so much that I did not know whether the bomb blast had taken place in a cycle rickshaw or in a jewellery shop." Anita Roy, Deputy Commissioner of Police, New Delhi District, said: "The number of dead is uncertain at the moment. We are investigating the matter still and trying to locate the causes behind the blasts." Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal admitted: "We were expecting the possibility of such an incident taking place in crowded places in the run-up to the festival," he added. The Home Ministry has convened an emergency meeting to take stock of the situation arising out of the suspected IED blasts. Meanwhile, security has been beefed up in Jammu and Kashmir and Mumbai, the two places that have faced the ravages of bomb explosions and militant attacks over the past 16 years. A state of high alert has also been declared in Chennai, Chandigarh, Haryana and Andhra Pradesh.

     Saturday's blast was the second to have taken place in the Indian capital in the last five months. An earlier blast on May 23, 2005, claimed the life of one unidentified person and injured over 70 people. The May blasts rocked two cinema halls in central Delhi, which were screening the controversial Sunny Deol starrer ''Jo Bole So Nihal.'' A red alert was sounded in the Capital and its adjoining areas then. The pro Khalistan militant group Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) was behind the blast. The explosion's impact left a six-inch-wide crater inside the cinema hall. "Most people sustained injuries because of the splinters flying off chairs," said a police officer. The blasts took place at the Liberty and Satyam Cinema complexes. In 1997, four persons were killed and 30 injured in a blast that took place in the month of December.

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