Two persons were killed in a blast inside the top floor of a house in the Bisra Dahar Road area in a busy locality here on Monday forenoon.One deceased was identified as Ghamanlal Agarwal, a businessman while efforts were on to identify the other. As per sources, the unidentified victim was working under Agarwal. The incident occurred at about 11 am and the sound of the explosion was heard up to more than a kilometre away.
The blast was so powerful that the roof of the house was blown off and all articles in the house were destroyed.A police team, led by Rourkela SP AK Singh, rushed to the place with a scientific team and sniffer dog and conducted investigation to find clues to the blast. large quantities of gelatin sticks and detonators were found at the place, raising suspicion that it could be a case of unlawful assembling of explosive materials used for illegal mining or other criminal activities.
There was suspicion that the explosives might have been collected to be used for illegal mining as Agarwal had been in the mining business since last some years.Further, Agarwal and another person, Ratha Kisan, had been arrested by the Brahmani Taranga police in January 2013 and 61 bags of ammonia nitrate, weighing 50 kg each, and 3,300 pieces of detonators were seized. Both of them had confessed to their involvement in trading of explosives. Rourkela DSP TK Jena informed that investigation was on, after completion of which the actual fact about the blast would come to light.