CHENNAI: In a swift action, the city police have traced the registered owner of the motorbike which was used for bomb blast in Bangalore, in which 16 people were injured.
The number plate of the bike has been traced to a retired telecom employee here, who said that he had sold the bike about four years ago, a police source said.
Tamil Nadu registration number (TN 22 R 3769) belonged to K S Sankaranarayanan, a resident of Thillai Ganga Nagar here, they said.
“The bike was in my son’s name. But we sold it about four years back, since my son left for the US”, he told the police.
Sankaranarayanan, said he was shocked when police knocked his door and told him that the bike had been used in the Bangalore blast.
Police sources said that while they were tracking down the number plate of the bike, they were also inquiring whether a fake number plate was used.
Investigations are on with the state police coordinating with their counterparts in Karnataka and the National Investigation Agency, the sources said.
Terror struck Bangalore yesterday ahead of the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections when a low-intensity bomb exploded near the bustling BJP city office in a busy residential area injuring at least 16 people, including 11 policemen.
The bomb, apparently strapped to the motorbike with a Tamil Nadu registration plate parked between a van and a car, went off around 10.30 AM about 100 metres diagonally opposite BJP office in Malleshwaram.
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Investigators probing the Bangalore blast have tracked down the owner of the motorcycle where the bomb was planted but no one has been arrested so far in connection with Wednesday’s explosion.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Thursday said that with the help of Tamil Nadu Police, the first buyer of the motorcycle has been traced and then the second buyer and from there they traced the third person who bought the bike. “So far, we have not come to any conclusion about the people behind yesterday’s blast. Investigation is such a matter that we cannot say we can do within a definite period of time. But I assure the nation that we will book the culprits, we will book the perpetrators and we are on that way,” he said at a press conference in New Delhi.
He, however, said so far no one has been arrested.
Mr. Shinde said the Home Ministry has been alerting all states for the last two-three months that there was a possibility of a terror attack being carried out in places where such incidents had taken place in the past and also in metro cities. He also referred to the blast at Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore exactly three years ago.
Asked about the nature of explosives used in yesterday’s blast, Mr. Shinde said Improvised Explosive Devices were used. He also dismissed the suggestion that the explosion was an attempt to disrupt the democratic process in Karnataka where assembly elections will be held next month.
