By Our Correspondent NEW DELHI: Seven people were killed and 25 seriously wounded when a bomb exploded near the ticket counters of the crowded New Delhi Railway Station here on June 12, Many others were less seriously injured in the blast.
The bomb exploded at 10:30 am after the rush hour and police spokesman said that it had a quartz timer. It is suspected to have been planted in a suitcase. The explosion split the concrete floor. There were about 200 people in the area in which the blast took place. The trains were not affected by the bomb explosion and by the afternoon the station was working normally. Police were stationed in large numbers after the blast. Indian capital had been on a heightened security alert as the nation marked the fifth anniversary of the bloody assault by the Indian army on the Golden Temple on June 6, 1984, in which thousands of innocent Sikh men women and children were killed.
Police said that two organizations fighting for the independent state of Khalistan were responsible. For the bombing. They did not give any evidence to support their claim.
Political observers pointed out there was an uncanny resemblance in these bombing and the so called bombings of passenger buses which plagued Delhi just as the Ganhi was about to introduce the draconian and undemocratic Anti-Terrorist laws applicable to Punjab a few years back.
Those blasts had angered the People and had helped the Congress I to ride roughshod over the Opposition’s objections to those proposed measures. A Sikh businessman, widely believed to be innocent, was arrested in the case. He has still not been convicted by any court.
Pointing out that numerous opinion polls had said that the people were strongly disillusioned with the Rajiv regime and were looking to replace him in the next General elections scheduled for January 1990, a political analyst said that Congress I could be attempting to play the Sikh card again.
The bomb blast he said, could ‘be the start of a campaign to portray the Sikhs as extremists threatening the unity and integrity of the Nation and thus to try and garner more votes too to the Congress I just as the party did in the 1985 elections. Despite power hungry people can take desperate steps,” the commentator said.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 16, 1989
