An explosion in a heap of garbage shattered windowpanes of several flats at Vidiya Colony of Miyapur on Thursday. While panicked residents mistook it for a bomb blast, police suspect it to be a cracker explosion.
Municipal contract workers set fire to trash which they swept to a corner of an open plot abutting an apartment building -- NMR Residency around noon. As the waste-papers and dry grass burned, there was an explosion.
Windowpanes of all the flats of NMR Residency facing the open plot and some apartments in adjacent complexes were shattered. None was injured though. “I came rushing as my children study in a school here,” Ahmed, a plumber from Rajaram Colony, said.
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He heaved a sigh of relief after finding that the explosion had nothing to do with the school. But students of the school said they felt like running away from their classes on hearing the massive sound. Owner of the open plot where explosion occurred, Sundeep, said the blast could be due to accidental ignition of some explosive materials left behind by contractors who laid an underground drainage pipeline in the area.
“I am told detonators or explosive substances abandoned by the contractors may have got mixed in the garbage. Unaware of it, the sweepers set it on fire,” he said. Miyapur Inspector S. Bheem Reddy, however, maintained that all evidence at the spot proved the explosion occurred due to abandoned firecrackers.
Will the explosion from leftover firecrackers be so powerful as to shatter windowpanes at a height of 50 feet? “It looks like heavy scrap was lying over the firecrackers which must have created high pressure,” the Inspector reasoned out.
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Sniffer dogs, bomb disposal and CLUES team inspected the spot.