BANGALORE: The toll in Thursday's explosion at Narganahalli village in Devanahalli police station limits has risen to five with the police on Friday tracing the skull of another person whose body was blown to pieces.

The police said a search of the blast site revealed that three bodies had been blown to pieces while two had been charred beyond recognition. Experts from Forensic Science Laboratory, who inspected the blast site and collected samples, have confirmed that five people had been killed, they said.

The police gave names of three of the dead, whose identities were not known earlier, as Saravanan (22), Chandrasekhar (28) and Vijay (25), all from Gudiyatam in Tamil Nadu. The relatives of the victims, who arrived here on Friday, identified the dead on the basis of their clothes and personal belongings, the police said.

Investigation has revealed that Narayana Swamy Shetty of Hoskote taluk, who too was killed in the blast, had hired the four men from Gudiyatam to manufacture crude gelatine sticks. The four workers had come to Devanahalli only a fortnight ago, the police said.

Narayana Swamy Shetty, a businessman, supplied the gelatine sticks to quarry owners in the area. He had taken on rent a temporary shed that was built on an agricultural land owned by Venkataramanappa, a quarry owner from Kempathimmanahalli.

The police ruled out a naxalite or terrorist angle to the explosion and dismissed as fictitious such reports published in a section of the media. Forensic Science Laboratory was yet to come out with a report on the incident, the police said.

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