By IANS
Lucknow : Serial blasts ripped through the civil court premises in the Uttar Pradesh towns of Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi within minutes of each other Friday killing at least eight people.
Five people were killed in the temple town of Varanasi in three simultaneous explosions within the court compound. In Faizabad, there were two blasts that took the lives of three people.
The explosion in Lucknow was relatively low in intensity and did not result in any casualties.
The bomb was a crude device hidden in a bag of ‘khoya’, a milk product, and kept on a bicycle that was strategically left along a tree near the tin sheds under which hundreds of lawyers operate in their makeshift offices.
A police official said that the bomb did not explode with full intensity.
While officials were circumspect in ascribing a motive to the terror attack, lawyers in the city saw a link between some of their colleagues roughing up the three terrorists arrested last week for allegedly plotting to abduct Rahul Gandhi. They had confessed their affiliation with the Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammad.
Lawyers in the state capital were raising anti-Pakistan slogans and threatening to paralyse all work in the court. They were planning a march to press for stern action against all terrorists.