Date:02/12/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/12/02/stories/2007120258540100.htm

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Blast on track kills schoolboy

S. Dorairaj

Puducherry: A school student was killed, and three of his friends were injured, when a crude device went off on the rail track at Vanarapet near the railway station here on Saturday.

The injured have been admitted to the Government General Hospital.

The condition of one of them was serious, according to the police.

According to preliminary investigations, the boys, residing in houses along the track close to the station, picked up tender coconuts and a bag in which the device was concealed from the nearby Food Corporation India godown complex.

They laid the tender coconuts and the bag on the track and, out of curiosity, tried to open the packets kept inside. The device went off killing 11-year-old V. Ajitkumar and injuring T. Senthamizhselvan (13), Vicky alias L.Susainathan (10) and C.Karthik Raja (12).

The condition of Senthamizhselvan, who underwent an operation for multiple injuries, was serious.

Country-bomb attack

The incident took place around 1.15 p.m., nearly ten hours after a country-bomb attack, a fall-out of a “domestic dispute,” on a house in the nearby Nagamuthu Mariamman Koil Street. Nobody was injured in the attack.

Deputy Inspector General of Police S.Vasudeva Rao ruled out the possibility of miscreants having planted the crude bombs on the rail track.

Terming it a “freak incident,” he said “small time criminals use such crude bombs to settle scores, and, once in about six months, such cases come to our notice.”

Senior Superintendent of Police Chhaya Sharma said that as of now the police did not see a link between the blast on the railtrack and the attack on the house.

They had collected samples from the blast site and formed three teams to nab the culprits. A door-to-door search operation was conducted in houses close to the rail track at Vanarapet.