Police say Sasaram blast handiwork of Maoists

Kumar Rajiv Nayan

Sasaram: There is an atmosphere of fear in Sasaram town in Rohtas district following a bomb blast at the gate of the Sasaram Civil court in the afternoon on Wednesday in which one person was killed and two others injured.

Rohtas SP M S Dhillon did not rule out hands of naxals in the  bomb explosion. Shahabad DIG Md Rahman said that the bomb blast case at the gate of the Sasaram civil court had been solved and he had  sent the report to the police headquarters. The bomb blast was a handiwork of the Maoists, he said.

The DIG said that an advocate clerk Bijay Sah was responsible for the March 11, 2016 , bomb explosion near the court campus and had been sent to the jail. In his absence, his relativedd Sachin Mahato alias Guddu had taken over the command and planted several gelatins beneath the seat of his motorcycle to blast it at the gate of the court but seeing the police force there, he started fleeing at a high speed but his motorcycle jumped the speed breaker on the road and the bomb kept beneath the seat exploded in which  lower parts of his body were blown up along with his motorcycle. He said Bijay Sah used to plant bomb beneath the seat of the motorcycle and his relative Guddu also followed him..

This was the third bomb explosion near the Sasaram civil court. The first was exploded in 2003 near court campus in which a number of government employees were injured. Again on March 11, 2016, a bomb kept in a motorcycle  exploded near the court campus in which  a youth was injured. The miscreants adopted the same trick this time and repeated the March 11 incident at the same place. A bomb was exploded on the campus of Ara Civil court on July 13, 2009, in which an advocate was killed and on January 23, 2015 in which a woman carrier and a constable were killed while over two dozen injured. A bomb was also exploded at Chhapara civil court the same year. Obviously, the repeated bomb explosions on and around the campus of civil courts in Bihar has exposed the security arrangement of the government.

Meanwhile, the Additional District and Session Judge, Sasaram, Vijay Kumar Pandey, in a communication to the Rohtas SP on Wednesday has demanded security guard during night at his government quarter saying  anti- social elements keep entered the campus by jumping the boundarywalls.

Rohtas SP M S Dhillon said that some unidentified miscreants hid a bomb beneath the seat of a motorcycle parked outside the Sasaram Civil Court campus on Old G T road at Sasaram and when Sachin Mahato alias Guddu tried to start his motorcycle at about 2pm on Wednesday, it exploded in which Guddu was killed on the spot while a police constable Sri Paswan of Gaura village under Kudara police station in Kaimur district and Shiv Ratan Bind of Machwar village under Shivsagar police station were seriously injured. Later, the doctors referred them to Varanasi in precarious condition. Police recovered pieces of detonator and gelatin from the spot.

Police have sealed the border and patrolling has been intensified. Dog squad and a team of Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) from Patna have been pressed into operation to identify the miscreants. The CCTV camera in Sasaram DSP’s office, adjacent to the spot, revealed the explosion took place on running motorcycle when the deceased had moved about 10 metres from the parking stand. The FSL also submitted its report to the range DIG.