Midnapore blast: Adhikari alleges evidence tampering to Shah

KOLKATA: The leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday, seeking the latter's intervention in the blast at the residence of a local Trinamool Congress leader at Bhupatinagar in East Midnapore district on Friday night that killed three persons.

The blast took place near the ancestral residence of Adhikari. In his letter, Adhikari claimed that after the blast on Friday night, attempts have even been made by the local police to destroy evidence so the actual mystery behind the explosion is never revealed.

"Even a day after the blast, the police did not cordon off the location where the incident took place and failed to secure it before forensic examination. The intention was to deliberately tamper with evidence," Adhikari wrote.

The BJP leader also alleged that the explosion happened while Trinamool workers were making crude bombs at the house of the party's booth president, Rajkumar Manna, who was killed in the explosion along with two others. He said though the official death toll in the blast is three, local people suspect that some more people have been killed in the explosion.

"West Bengal has become a hotbed of crude bomb industry. Over the past few weeks, several incidents of crude bomb explosion have been reported from across the state and even children have died or sustained injuries in these blasts," Adhikari's letter read.

The BJP leader pointed out that recently, senior Lok Sabha member of Trinamool Congress, Saugata Roy, had spoken about the formula which is being widely used for making crude bombs across West Bengal.

On Sunday, the Midnapore blast incident took a new turn after Lata Rani Manna, the wife of deceased Trinamool worker Rajkumar Manna, told the police that her husband was involved in illegal firecracker business and the explosion took place when the workers of the cracker factory were smoking there.