80 killed, over 150 injured as terror strikes Jaipur

KS Tomar and Siddhartha S Bose, Hindustan Times

Jaipur, May 13, 2008

At least 80 people were killed and over 150 injured in seven explosions that took place on Tuesday evening in some of the most crowded areas of Jaipur. The eighth bomb was found and defused.

“We have information that 80 people have died,” Rajasthan Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria was quoted by AFP as saying. Earlier, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje told reporters that 60 people had died and 150 were injured.

State police chief AS Gill said, “Obviously, it’s a terrorist plot. The way it has been done, the attempt was to cause maximum damage.” He did not rule out the use of RDX and timer devices.
Though no one has claimed responsibility yet, security and intelligence sources said the explosions could be the handiwork of the Bangladesh-based Harkat ul Jehadi Islamia or the Pakistan-based Lashkar-i-Tayyeba. The home minister said one suspect had been detained and was being investigated.

This was Rajasthan’s second brush with terrorism in recent years — the last being a bomb blast at the Ajmer Sharif dargah of Moinuddin Chisti on October 11, 2007 that killed three devotees.
The Tuesday terrorist strike in Jaipur started at 7.25 pm. There were seven explosions at six places — Manak Chowk, Sanganeri Gate Hanuman Mandir, Johri Bazaar, Tripoliya, Chauti Chaupar (two explosions) and Chandpole Hanuman Mandir. Police said another bomb was defused at Chandpole Hanuman temple.

The temples were chosen obviously because Tuesdays are special for Hanuman worship, and the explosions would have the maximum impact. The bombs were carried on bicycles — or perhaps cars — to the destinations before being exploded by the terrorists. Flowers strewn in blood at Chauti Chaupar and police helmets scattered on the Kotwali police station porch told a gruesome tale. Two bombs had exploded in quick succession at Manak Chowk and Chauti Chaupar.
Many of the flower vendors at Chauti Chaupar were injured, as bombs exploded behind the cement platform on which they displayed their flowers. Soon a bomb exploded in the premises of the Kotwali police station across the road.

Ram Babu, an eyewitness, said, “It was the sound of something heavy dropping with a thud. When we turned back we saw the injured in the parking lot outside the police station.”
Homemaker S Dangayach, 42, witnessed the heart-rending death of two children. “I saw several people running in panic. I was unable to run... I was saved by the grace of God,” she told HT at Sawai Mansingh Hospital. At the Kotwali police station, three policemen were injured. Smashed helmets were scattered all over the place along with the mangled remains of vehicles.
Police evacuated the entire walled city within an hour of the blasts. Vehicles were prohibited from going in and people were asked to walk instead. Security officials said the cellphone network was jammed to prevent the spread of rumours.

Minutes after the evacuation, riot control vehicles, columns of rapid action force and special task force were deployed at different crossings inside the walled city, turning it into a fortress.

Screams, silence as families collect bodies of Jaipur blast victims
3 hours ago
JAIPUR, India (AFP) — A shock of thick black hair was all that peeped out from under a white sheet that covered a small body Wednesday at a morgue in Jaipur after serial bomb blasts killed about 80 people.

Eight bombs went off within minutes of each other in crowded markets close to several Hindu temples in what police said was a terror attack on the city 260 kilometres (160 miles) west of India's capital.

The body on the stretcher belonged to 10-year-old Kanha Mahar, who had gone to a temple to the Hindu deity Hanuman on a traditional day to pray to the monkey god. He had huge gash in his head.

"We were looking for him all evening," said his uncle Jagdish Kumar Gathera, who found him at the hospital, unable to breathe.
The doctors ordered drugs but before they arrived the boy was dead.
Gathera and family looked on in shocked silence as Mahar's body was taken off a rusty gurney into an ambulance, leaving behind a pool of blood.

Volunteers of the right-wing Hindu organisation Rashtriya Swayamseval Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers Association), who were manning the short-staffed hospital mortuary said it was a scene that played through the night.

Bodies arrived quickly from one of half a dozen blast sites, family members had to search for loved ones and corpses were put into the morgue's deep-freeze for identification through the coming hot day.

With several of the bombs going off near temples, there were fears that Hindu-Muslim riots could break out, an ever-present worry in religiously divided India. Blue-fatigue clad paramilitary troops of India's Rapid Action Force and police fanned out across the city as a curfew was imposed from 9:00 am (0330 GMT).

The nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which has links to the RSS and rules the western desert state of Rajasthan, of which Jaipur is the capital, called a strike Wednesday to protest against the bombings.
But in the hospital wards and at the morgue, both Hindus and Muslims, a strong minority in the city, were among the dead.

A man clad in a red shirt who arrived shortly after the Gatheras left, cried out in anguish when he saw his niece Arina Maruf, also 10, laid out on the gurney Mahar had just vacated.
The little girl's head was a tousle of matted curls caked with dried blood and her eyes were still open as the volunteers carefully covered her with a white sheet.
The centre of the attacks was the walled city's Johari bazaar, a strip of jewellers and clothes shops housed in the pink buildings with delicate filigree windows that are the hallmark of Jaipur, known as the Pink City.

Jaipur is popular with foreign tourists but there were few in the city in mid-May, the hot season in northern India when temperatures soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Shops were closed ahead of the curfew as curious bystanders milled around a blast site, staring at shards of glass, cracked windows of a car and scattered slippers.

At Jaipur cremation ground, Govind Khanagwal, his foot bandaged, sat by his father's corpse as volunteers took kindling to add to the funeral pyre and recalled the confusion.
"Everything was black. I ran up an alley behind the shop," Khanagwal, 22, said.
"I came back after a minute or two and he was lying there, his legs and arms were no longer attached to his body."
But he pledged to return to the destroyed stall run by his father that sold garlands for temple worshippers.

Another survivor vividly recalled the horror.
"I heard two explosions and I was wondering what happened. Then a bomb went off right in front of me," said Malchand Bagoria, who runs a fruit stall opposite one of the bomb sites.
"Then I saw a woman's body go flying through the air. There were so many bodies." Source: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iW2rcYR1gBwL7f8wMNWm0vvTMJOQ