The Hindu : National : ULFA hand suspected in grenade blast

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

National

National

ULFA hand suspected in grenade blast

By Our Special Correspondent

GUWAHATI, JUNE 9. Twenty-two persons were injured in a grenade blast in a cinema hall of Upper Assam's Tinsukia district this afternoon while police resorted to firing blanks to disperse a violent mob in neighbouring Dibrugarh district.

Suspected militants lobbed a grenade in Tinsukhia's Paradise cinema, showing the Hindi movie, Aan, starring Akshay Kumar, around 1 p.m.

The Inspector-General of Police (Law and Order), D.K. Pathak, said that a Chinese-made grenade lobbed from the balcony fell and exploded in the rear of the hall when the lights had just been switched off. Five of the injured were rushed to the Dibrugarh Medical College Hospital where the condition of one of them was said to be critical.

Although the cinema hall authorities denied having received any threat from any militant outfit, the needle of suspicion, the police said, was on the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Nine militant outfits, including the ULFA, had clamped a ban on screening Hindi films in cinema halls and cable TV with effect from November 15, 2003. However, cinema hall owners and distributors, with support from the Assamese film industry, continued screening Hindi films.

After the blast, Army and paramilitary force personnel cordoned off the cinema hall, and all routes into and out of the town were sealed. A manhunt has been launched to track down the culprits.

Separately, in Chabua of Dibrugarh district, police had to fire blanks to disperse a 10,000-strong mob that turned violent. Some people began pelting stones at police personnel and gheraoed the Chabua police station. The mob had gathered outside the police station to protest the killing of a six-year-old boy by his kidnappers on Monday.

Tulsi Prasad Agarwalla, a Class 1 student, was strangulated and his body dumped in the house of his former tutor within hours of being abducted from the St. Montfort School. Tulsi's former tutor, Ranjit Kumar Gupta, has been arrested.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National