At the house, where the blast occured. Express.Two persons were killed and six injured in a blast in Amritsar on Monday evening. The incident happened inside the house of one Gurnam Singh in Luv Kush locality, while he was searching a pile of scrap the he allegedly brought from a police station.
The deceased were identified as Rattan Lal (65) and Rajinder Kumar (40). The injured persons were Gurnam Singh, Manjit Singh, Tarsem Lal, Vijay Gurlal and a four-year-old Laddu. Two other injured persons were unidentified.
Gurnam Singh is employed with the Punjab Home Guards Department. He was allegedly deployed at police station cantonment Amritsar.
“Gurnam Singh had brought scrap from the cantonment police station. It was a huge stock of scrap. He had to sell this scrap to a scrap dealer near the house. But before that he wanted to be sure that there was nothing too expensive in it. So he was searching the pile of scrap since morning. He had also called Rattan Lal and Rajinder Kumar for help. First they were searching scrap at the street. They took the scrap into house after a neighbours objected to it,” a local resident said.
Amritsar Police said they were yet to find the reason behind the blast. “We have been investigating the case. It will be too early to reach judgement. We have call forensic team to find what kind of explosive was behind blast,” said DCP Jagmohan Singh.
The residents alleged that there were crackers in the scrap which were seized by police during crack down on illegal sale of crackers.
“It is sheer negligence of the police that they gave scrap to their employee to sell it in open market without actually checking what was into it. It could have killed many people,” said a neighbour.
Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner Shivdular Singh announced Rs 2 lakh compensation for the kin of the deceased.
