Cinema blast reveals disturbing angle

Ludhiana: As the Punjab police, security agencies and forensic experts yesterday tried to gather shreds of evidence about those behind the powerful blast in a cinema hall in Ludhiana on 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 audience had just settled in after the intermission.

All those killed and the majority of the injured were migrant labourers who had found work in the teeming industrial city.

Those behind the blast seem to have targeted the theatre since Bhojpuri films shown there primarily catered to the migrant population. It being a Sunday, the theatre was nearly full.

One-third of the 3.5 million residents of Ludhiana and its nearby areas are migrant workers.

CM's assurance

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 yesterday.

Punjab police officials investigating the blast said they were working on all theories, including a possible link to Kashmiri terrorist outfits and the 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.

Pakistan link

Reacting to the Ludhiana blast, former Punjab supercop K.P.S. Gill said: "Cells of the Babbar Khalsa International are trying to re-activate in Punjab. They still have links in Pakistan and also with other terrorist outfits. The cinema hall blast here came within hours of a bomb blast at a revered Sufi shrine in Ajmer in Rajasthan on Friday."

The cinema hall and two smaller theatres, which comprise the Shingaar cinema complex, were evacuated on Sunday evening after the blast to facilitate a search for explosives.

Security officials admitted they had no intelligence to suggest that Punjab could be a terrorist target, although state Director General of Police N.P.S. Aulakh observed: "We had issued an alert for the festival season."

The state was placed on red alert after the 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-activate their cells in Punjab.

The Punjab Police is now probing all angles to the blast, including the recent conviction and death penalty awarded to Babbar Khalsa terrorist Jagtar Singh Hawara and others in the Beant Singh assassination case by a Chandigarh court.