Ludhiana,(IANS) As the Punjab police, security agencies and forensic experts Monday tried to gather shreds of evidence about those behind the powerful blast in a cinema hall in Ludhiana Sunday, it has become clear that those targeted were migrant labourers and workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states.
Six people were killed and nearly 30 injured when a bomb went off in the front rows of the Shingaar cinema hall. A Bhojpuri film – “Janam Janam Ke Saath” – was being screened at the time and the movie had restarted after the interval.
All those killed and the majority of the injured were migrant labourers who had settled in this city – one of the biggest industrial cities in Asia – for work.
Those behind the blasts carefully targeted the theatre that was regularly showing Bhojpuri films for the migrant population. Being the festival of Eid and a Sunday, there was a huge rush at the theatre.
One third of the 3.5 million residents of Ludhiana and its nearby areas are migrant workers.
Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said that terrorism would not be allowed to raise its head in Punjab again.
“We will ensure greater security and also bring the perpetrators of this crime to book. We will ensure full security of migrants in the state,” Badal said here Monday.
Punjab police officials investigating the blast said they were working on all theories, including a possible link to Kashmiri terrorist outfits and Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) – a Khalistani terrorist organisation.
“A forensic team from the National Security Guards has also arrived. We are working on various theories,” said Jalandhar range inspector general Sanjiv Kalra.
Reacting to the Ludhiana blast, former Punjab supercop K.P.S. Gill pointed out: “Cells of the Babbar Khalsa international are trying to re-activate in Punjab. They still have their links in Pakistan and also with other terrorist outfits. The cinema hall blast here came within hours of the bomb blast at the Sufi shrine of Ajmer in Rajasthan Friday.”
The cinema hall and two smaller theatres, which comprise the Shingaar cinema complex, were evacuated Sunday evening after the blast to search for any other explosives.
Security officials admitted that they had no intelligence that Punjab could be a target of terrorists, though Punjab’s director general of police N.P.S. Aulakh said: “We had issued an alert for the festival season”.
The state was put on red alert after Sunday’s blast.
Punjab-based terrorist groups like BKI did figure in the twin bomb blasts in cinema halls in Delhi in 2005. There have been reports occasionally with security agencies here that terrorists groups had made several attempts to re-group and re-active their cells in Punjab. The Punjab Police seized over six kilograms of RDX in January this year near Jalandhar.
The Punjab Police is now probing all angles to the blast at Ludhiana, including the recent conviction and awarding of death penalty to Babbar Khalsa terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara and others in the Beant Singh assassination case by a court in Chandigarh.