A 11-year-old boy was killed when a bomb exploded inside a public toilet at Bongaon’s Buxipally in North 24-Parganas on Monday morning.
Police said the explosion took place when the victim, identified as Raju Roy, a resident of Subhashpally, went to the public toilet where some bombs were allegedly kept hidden in a sack.
Local sources said that the impact of the blast, which occurred around 6am, was so strong that the boy flew a few metres away and fell outside the toilet.
Some local residents, hearing the deafening sound of the blast, rushed out and found the critically injured boy lying in a pool of blood. They took him to Bongaon state general hospital, where doctors declared him dead.
Police have arrested two persons — identified as Bappa Biswas, 30, and Asit Adhikari, 53 — for their alleged involvement in the incident and recovered eight bombs from the toilet.
Local sources said the boy, who lived with his parents at a rented house in the area, had often used the public toilet that the locals apparently abandoned for the growth of bushes around it.
On Monday, the victim, while going to a market with his father, went inside the toilet to attend to nature’s call. It was at that time that one of the bombs in the stockpile went off.
A relative of the victim said: “Raju was a school dropout. He was undergoing training at a cycle repairing shop and had left home with his father.”
The blast has created a fresh political blame game between the Trinamul Congress and the BJP. It occurred within three weeks of the Egra blast that had claimed a dozen lives followed by a blast in Budge Budge that claimed three lives.
Trinamul’s Bongaon organising district president Biswajit Das said,
“The BJP has been unleashing tension in Bongaon by gathering goons. The situation has aggravated in the area after the BJP won in the last Assembly poll in the area.”
The BJP’s Bongaon district organising committee president Debdas Mondal, refuted the allegations.
“People know that goons are backed by the Trinamul Congress. Let the police find out who had kept the bombs in the deserted toilet,” said Mondal.
A senior police official of the Bongaon district police said: “We have got some clues about the persons involved in the blast. We have arrested two persons while the search for others is on.”
