After an exercise of over four days, the police on Wednesday succeeded in arresting the main accused of the Petlawad blast case, Rajendra Kasawa, from Maharashtra.
After detaining his family members, police had mounted pressure on Kaswa to surrender before police. However, the police are yet to confirm his arrest.
Kaswa has been booked for keeping gelatin sticks in his house, which resulted in the explosion. All residences and godowns of Kasawa have been sealed.
Eighty-nine people were killed and nearly 100 injured when a massive blast took place in the building of Rajendra Kasawa, who has a licence to use explosive materials for digging wells in rocky areas. Kasawa had stored the explosive materials, including gelatin sticks, in huge quantity in the residential building, which also houses two shops, and is situated close to the busy Sethia Restaurant in the new bus stand area, a police official said.
Till Tuesday, the police had taken into custody Narendra and Phoolchand, two brothers of Kasawa, and handed them over to Jhabua police. They also seized 69 detonators, two batteries and a large number of gelatin sticks from the residence of Narendra in Petlawad. The explosive materials were allegedly illegally stocked by him for carrying out mining activities.
Notably, the State Government had announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh on information leading to the arrest of Rajendra Kasawa, who has been absconding since the blasts occurred on September 12.
Kasawa was booked under section 304 (manslaughter) of the IPC and other two other sections of the Explosive Substances Act after the blast, which completely destroyed at least two buildings - the one in which the explosive materials for digging wells was stored, and an adjacent restaurant - besides damaging several houses.
Meanwhile, politics over Kasawa intensified in Jhabua district, with Congress leader and former Union Minister Kantilal Bhuria staging a protest at the city Kotwali police station demanding that State BJP chief Nandkumar Singh Chauhan should be booked immediately.
"Nandkumar has told media in Bhopal that Kasawa was a close friend of my son Dr Vikrant which is totally baseless. My son does have a friend whose name is Rajendra Kasawa but he is 30 and lives in Jhabua town, not in Petlawad," Bhuria said.
"When police can register a case against our State president Arun Yadav who had alleged that Kasawa was an RSS man, under Government pressure, why can't they book Nandkumar," he asked.