The Silk City saw yet another incident of bombing. A gang of three unidentified miscreants came by a black Pulsar motorbike and hurled bombs and made indiscriminate blank firing in a daredevil manner at Bauri Street of the Bijipur locality under the Brahmapur Town police station on Saturday and managed to escape.
After getting information, a team of top police officials consisting of DIG (Southern Range) Amitabh Thakur, Brahmapur SP Anirudh Singh; and IIC of Town police station Anil Kumar Misra reached the spot of the incident and recovered an un-disposed crude bomb and a round of bullets.
As per reports, at about 10 am on Saturday, the gang desperately searched someone apparently to settle scores. Failing to locate the targeted person, the miscreants met a young man called Nigro, with whom they exchanged hot words and immediately thereafter hurled bombs which however did not meet their target.
When the miscreants wanted to flee the spot, Nigro with the help of some local residents succeeded in catching one of the gang. But they could hold the miscreant only for a few seconds. The other two miscreants used a 9MM pistol and opened one round of blank fire to terrorise the detainers of their colleague. Being scared, Nigro and the local residents freed the miscreant and left the spot.
The preliminary reports suggest that previous enmity was the key cause of the incident. The local denizens and business community are in a state of panic and the incident has posed a big challenge for the city police. Reacting to the incident, a senior citizen said, ‘As if we are staying in Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir, not in Brahmapur.” There is a strong public perception against the police that lack of stringent action and strict vigil on criminals has resulted in the rise of incidents of burglaries, looting, bombing, and extortion in this great heritage city.
Mention may be made that similar bombing incidents had taken place in Gosaninuagam, Kampa Street and Aska Road area in the recent past.