As investigators try to delve deeply into the cause of the bomb blast on a train at Mulund railway station in north-east Mumbai on Thursday, the death toll rose to 12 and the number of injured went up to 71.

The blast occurred in a first class ladies compartment adjoining a general compartment during evening peak hours at 8.40pm as the suburban train slowly entered Mulund station.

Of the four women who died, two of them Rina Patnaik, 25, and Shobha Shinde, 20 were railway constables. The rest of the dead include Vidya Kashiraman Iyer, 30, female, Swapnil Ravindra Kamble, 25, Nandwani Namdev Mangaldas, 55, female, Jagdish Arjun Dasghai, Jagdish Ramchandra Bhatia, Shirish Mukund Agashe, R.B. Salvi, Ashok Domse and one unidentified person. Of the injured 12 are women.

The injured have been taken to five hospitals in Mulund itself and others to Sion, KEM, Rajawadi and Hinduja hospitals.

Whilst the noise of the blast created panic and utter chaos at the station with many commuters jumping onto the tracks and thus injuring themselves, the aftermath of the blast resulted in a quiet day yesterday across the city. Whether it was because of a holiday due to Muharram or the India-New Zealand cricket match, most residents preferred to stay home and revert their minds to something less tense.

However, for the relatives and friends of the injured lying in hospitals across the north-eastern part of the city, their emotions ran high – and there was shock, anger and hatred. "Why must a ghastly act of this nature happen to innocent people?" said Ajit Deshmukh, father of 25-year-old Shilpa, a software engineer, who was injured in the blast.

"She was returning home from her office in Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) in the evening, when the blast threw her down resulting in injuries on her back and a hairline crack to her shoulder bone," he told Gulf News at the Sion Hospital where 27 injured people have been admitted.

Several of her office colleagues, who had read her name in the newspapers yesterday morning were stunned and came to visit her, though hospital authorities did not allow any one other than close relatives.

Shilpa's colleague, Shirish Wadwekar, says, "She is really a brave girl since she got herself admitted in Saidham Hospital in Mulund on her own warning them of the blast and that more such injured people would be arriving."

She was later shifted to the Sion municipal hospital where the "treatment is excellent," according to her father.

Meanwhile, Prashant More rushed to Mumbai from Pune when he heard that his brother Deepak was injured in the blast. "Imagine, I learnt that he was injured only in the morning," he says, looking visibly upset. "My brother, who is generally chatty, is silent due to the shock of the blast. He seems to be mentally depressed but I'm sure he'll come out of it," he says, trying to reassure himself.

His brother works in CST and was returning to his home in Badlapur where he lives with his wife and eight-year-old son and six-year-old daughter. Though millions in this city depend on the suburban train, "there is no guarantee on their lives," he says sadly.

Three of the injured in the hospital are in a critical condition.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde told the media, "We have got a definite lead on the blast and investigations are in progress."

However, the police declined to say whether they had got any clue as to who was responsible for the blasts. "It is possible that groups like the Laskhar-e-Tayyaba who operate from across the border could be behind it," said Sridhar Wagal, Joint Commissioner of Police.

Shinde, who visited the mangled coach of the ill-fated suburban train at suburban Mulund station, said "there is a similarity between the December 2 Ghatkopar bomb blast and yesterday's incident".

Wagal said that Maharashtra Police and Mumbai Police were co-ordinating with the Railway Police in the investigations. The blast, though a powerful one, was a crude bomb and did not contain RDX, said Wagal.

"It is possible someone got into the train when it was going towards CST and then got down after placing the bomb on the rack before it was on its return journey."

Most people now feel that with at least four million commuters using the suburban trains everyday, it is time more security measures like closed circuit TV, X-Ray machines and a public address system was introduced and the overhead racks were removed to maintain security.

The day also happened to be a jittery one for the police as there were several fake and panicky calls of unclaimed left in different places. One at Powai in bus number 398 turned out to be a bag full of carpenter's tools. In another case, a caller to the CST told the police that he had an old enmity with the rail terminus and had therefore planted bombs in 11 different spots.