Kovai blast: 'Intention not to trouble govt or police'

COIMBATORE: The BJP's intention was not to trouble the Tamil Nadu government or the state police over the October 23 fatal car explosion in the city but make them take corrective measures and also expedite the probe, the saffron party's state president K Annamalai said on Monday.

The TN BJP chief, who has raised a number of questions vis-a-vis the probe into the matter, which has since been transferred to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), alleged there was specific systematic failure in preventing the incident, despite central intelligence inputs over the movement of 'radicalised' youths.

"I don't want to give trouble" to the government and police but he was raising the questions in the interest of the state and for expediting the probe, Annamalai told reporters here.

Reiterating the Centre had given specific alert to three states and three cities, including Coimbatore, Annamalai said the state government and the police, instead of announcing it just as a cylinder explosion, should have described it as a terror attack or suicide attack so that the people of the city could be more alert.

A man, identified as Jamesha Mubin, had been charred to death in the gas cylinder explosion in the car near a temple in the city last Sunday,with the BJP claiming it to be a terror attack and the victim as an ISIS sympathiser.

"Despite the alert and also knowing that Mubin was under NIA radar since 2019, along withy 96 other who were close to ISIS, police failed to trace his movement," he said adding that prevention of crime wuld have been better than detection.

This could be due to communication failure, as the intelligence agency and its sister agency in Tamil Nadu failed to act on the alert from the Centre on October 18, Annamalai said while displaying nails and ball-bearing allegedly found from the explosion site and appreciated the city police for rushing the spot and solving it swiftly.

It was not top officials but lower level personnel, who rushed to the site and managed to solve the case, he said.

Earlier, Annamalai visited the site and the temple and held discussions with the temple pritest.

He along with over 100 BJP cadres squatted on the temple premises and recited Kanda Sashti Kavacham, a hymn sung in praise of Lord Muruga and offered prayers to the Kottai Eswaran, the presiding deity.