Jammu grenade blast: One killed, 32 injured; Hizbul man arrested

Yasir Javed Bhat, a resident of Khanpura, was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police from Ban Toll Plaza near Nagrita when he was trying to escape to Kashmir, police said.

A Hizbul Mujahideen member was arrested after one person was killed and 32 others were were injured in a grenade blast inside Jammu’s General Bus Stand on Thursday afternoon. Yasir Javed Bhat, a resident of Khanpura, was arrested by Jammu and Kashmir Police from Ban Toll Plaza near Nagrita when he was trying to escape to Kashmir, Inspector General of Police M K Sinha said.

Police added that Yasir Javed, son of Javed Ahmed Bhat, admitted that he hurled the grenade following instructions from Kulgam Hizbul Mujahideen district commander Farooq Ahmad alias Umar.

Confirming that a grenade was lobbed towards the bus stand, Sinha had earlier said that there were no specific alerts from intelligence agencies prior to the attack. “Whenever there is a heightened state of alert we step up checking. There is always a possibility of someone to slip through…appeal everyone to remain calm. Police are working on all leads,” Sinha said.

The deceased was identified as Shariq, son of Intzar of Kalyanpur, Haridwar. This is the third grenade attack by terrorists in the Jammu bus stand, which is close to a busy market area, since May last year.

The grenade, lobbed by the accused, fell near a ticket booking counter, sources told The Indian Express. However, there were not many people present at an otherwise overcrowded bus stand at the time of the blast.

A parked bus of the state road transport corporation (SRTC) suffered extensive damage in the blast. The area was cordoned off by police after the blast. All the injured were taken to a hospital in Jammu. The injured included 11 residents of Kashmir, two from Bihar and one each from Chattisgarh and Haryana, PTI quoted officials as saying.

“The blast occurred on the roadside when there was a huge rush of people. I had come to drop my wife who was going to board a bus to Punjab,” one of the injured, Kuldeep Singh of the Pragwal area of the city, said.

This was the first grenade attack in Jammu-Kashmir since the killing of 40 CRPF personnel in Pulwama last month.

– With PTI inputs

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