Police on Wednesday arrested the sole accused in the Patnagarh gift parcel blast case Pujilal Meher and produced him in a local court. later, he was taken on a six-day remand for interrogation by police.
Earlier, DGP RP Sharma had confirmed that Bhainsa College lecturer Pujilal Meher was involved in the parcel bomb blast case and about his arrest by the Crime Branch (CB).
Sharma said Punjilal’s connection in the case was confirmed after a detailed CB investigation.
“Punjilal had planned this crime and executed it almost single handedly. He himself assembled the bomb with his own technique and went to Raipur carrying it in the shape of a parcel and got it booked at a courier office near a railway station,” the DGP said.
Six other suspects, including Skyking Courier, Patnagarh branch owner Dilip Das, courier delivery boy Sushant Seth, Chandramani Meher, Baibhasuth Bindhani and two others, who were being grilled by the CB officials, were released on the day.
later, in a Press conference Crime Branch IG Arun Bothra revealed the modus operandi and motive of the main conspirator.
“Punjilal had hatched the plan to completely destroy the family of his colleague Sanjukta Sahu as he was deeply hurt after he was replaced by her as Principal of the college where both are working and was not on good terms with her, which Meher revealed during interrogation,” informed the CB IG.
Punjilal learned making bombs through internet over a period of several months. later, he bought crackers from Balangir and not from Patnagarh in a bid to avoid any suspicion.
The accused had another house in Rampur, apart from the one in Patnagarh, where he single-handedly prepared the parcel bomb by testing small bombs for about 100 times.
He took fancy lights used for decoration during festivals and took out their filament and joined them together with a circuit, which when pulled would trigger the bomb. He put that filament in the middle of handmade bomb and camouflaged it as a parcel with a wrapping paper around.
Punjilal, in a move to avoid any suspension on him about the crime, took a class in the college and later, boarded train to Raipur from Kantabanji. He even did not buy a train ticket and had used a jacket and a cap to camouflage him during the journey.
On his arrival, he approached a shopkeeper requesting him to book a parcel on his behalf, lest he should not be captured in CCTV camera. But when the shopkeeper did not agree, he engaged an auto-rickshaw driver offering him extra money and got the parcel booked in the name of one SK Sinha. later, he even returned without a ticket.
Again, to avoid suspicion, he deleted files from his laptop and transferred a letter he had written to the Balangir SP to create confusion in probe to a pen drive. He also had taken a hard copy of the letter from a nearby internet café. The cunning lecturer even had deleted all his SMSs and cleared his chat history on WhatsApp. He attended the marriage reception of deceased Soumyasekhar Sahu at Patnagarh.
After the Crime Branch took over investigations on March 23, while investigating the case, the letter of Punjilal was received by the Balangir SP which stated that a love affair was the major reason of the case. But what surprised and gave a new direction to the probe was person, SK Sinha, by whose name the parcel was booked from Raipur.
When there was a big question before the police and media as to who might be the sender of the parcel, the CB sleuths crossed checked with courier and it was confirmed that SK Sinha, the fake name used for sending the courier from Raipur. later, some envelops similar to the ones sent to the SP were recovered from Punjilal’s house, which made police to zero in on Punjilal, said Bothra.