Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002
Tuesday, Dec 31, 2002 |
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Kerala
By Our Special Correspondent
The police are investigating the possibility of the involvement of the People's Democratic Party (PDP) led by Abdul Nasser Maudany in the incident. However, in a statement issued here today, the PDP district president, K.P. Basheer, and the district secretary, Gafoor Puthupadi, denied their party had any hand in the incident. They said the PDP was committed to a non-violent stir for release of their leader, Maudany. The Nadakkavu police have registered a case of "fire occurrence.'' A scientific assistant of the police department summoned from Malappuram examined the badly-burnt bus this afternoon and collected samples from the vehicle for further investigation. The City Police Commissioner, Sanjeev Patjoshi, told The Hindu that services of experts from the forensic science laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram have been requisitioned. The Commissioner said the cause of the fire had to be established before any action could be taken. He said a bomb explosion did not cause the fire as no sound was heard. Rumours were rife soon after the incident that the PDP supporters were involved. Two fire tenders summoned by the KSRTC authorities reached the scene soon after the fire was noticed but by the time it was doused the vehicle was badly damaged. Hardly an hour before the incident, PDP men had taken out a march through the city roads and held a meeting at the nearby mofussil bus stand, protesting against the alleged roughing up of Sufiya Maudany, wife of the PDP leader, by the police when she was in Coimbatore to meet her husband who is interned in the central jail there. The rumours about the PDP hand gained credence after telephone calls were received in some newspaper offices and at the enquiry counter of the KSRTC stating that the bus had been burnt in protest against the harassment meted out to Maudany's wife by the Tamil Nadu policemen. The caller at the KSRTC station said the PDP men were behind the incident and that a bomb had been planted. KSRTC officials here discount the possibility of the bus (registration number TN 07/ N 9316), having caught fire on its own by electrical short circuit since the vehicle was lying parked at the bus-stand for a long time. The authorities suspect that some sort of chemicals must have been used to set ablaze the vehicle. The bus had reached Kozhikode around 7 a.m. yesterday and was cleaned in the afternoon. It was to have left for Madurai later in the night. The vehicle was not parked in the bus bay in the stand but very close to the Mavoor Road. Anyone from the busy road could have walked up to the vehicle without attracting attention and done the mischief since there is no compound wall separating the KSRTC stand from the thoroughfare. Police have gone on alert in the city after reports that the police found and deactivated an explosive in Coimbatore early today. According to police, two youths on a motorbike stopped a bus of the Tamil Nadu Transport Corporation near Thrissur yesterday and tried to set it afire. The bus was going to Salem from Kochi. The passengers and local people foiled the attempt but the miscreants escaped. The police suspect this was also an attempt by the PDP supporters to register their protest.
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