Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Probe panel visits Tirupati blast site

By Our Special Correspondent

TIRUPATI OCT. 18. The one-man commission appointed by the Government to probe the claymore mine attack on the convoy of the Chief Minister, Chandrababu Naidu, today arrived at Tirupati. The panelist, Prakash Singh, DGP (retd), Uttar Pradesh, accompanied by the Director of the Forensic Science Laboratory, K.P.C. Gandhi, and other police top brass visited the Tirupati unit of the FSL and examined the wreckage of Mr. Naidu's bullet proof car. Mr. Singh held discussions with senior police officials in the FSL office and later travelled by the same route taken by the Chief Minister's convoy on the day of the blast.

Mr. Singh spent nearly an hour at the spot of the blast and acquainted himself with details of the incident. He is also said to have met all the police personnel who were for duty as part of the security arrangements for the Chief Minister on that day.

In an impromptu meeting with mediapersons at the blast spot, Mr. Singh said he might visit Tirupati again, but declined to make any serious comments over the probe as it was still in the preliminary stage. Asked if he could prima facie see any lapse in the security arrangements made for Mr. Naidu on the day of the blast, he said it was too early to comment, and indicated that probing the lapse factor, pinning down the responsibility and making recommendations to prevent the recurrence of such events were very much in the terms of reference of his commission. He later proceeded to the hill temple of Lord Venkateswara and returned to Hyderabad after a darshan of the Lord.

Sources today confirmed the detection of a pair of khakhi trousers and a white shirt along with a coil of wire under a culvert near the Cherlopalle bypass. They were found stashed in a polythene cover.

With regard to the case on the attack on Mr. Naidu, sources said that it was booked under POTA and the Explosives Act besides other relevant laws. Simultaneously, with the probe by the commission, an investigation of the attack by the SIT committee headed by D.T. Naik, I.G., is also apace. While the Prakash Singh panel would go into the lapses which led to the attempt on the convoy and make specific recommendations about dos and don'ts to avoid the recurrence of such attacks, the SIT team would investigate the case, track-down the culprits and take it to its logical end of filing the charge-sheet.

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