Twenty-five-year-old Mohammed Imtiyaz was celebrating his new job by treating his brother to a movie when destiny dealt the brothers a cruel blow on Sunday evening. Both, Imtiyaz and his 26–year-old brother, Mehraz lost one leg in the blast. Their uncle, Mohammed Shahid, is thankful to God that his nephews are alive unlike seven others who had died in the cinema-hall blast here.

“The film was a celebration of both Eid and Imtiyaz's new job as a painter. He had come to the city from Bihar only a few months ago and was very happy to have found a job”, says Shahid, who was sitting outside the civil hospital at Ludhaina.

Worse was in store for a 20-year-old Pawan Kumar who had to get both the legs amputated to survive. “We could not help it. Otherwise, his life was in danger,” said a doctor. Hailing from a village in Rae Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, Pawan had come to the city as a 16-year-old and had found work as a packer in a hosiery house. His brother , Raju, is aghast at the tragic events.

“When I heard about the blast, I immediately rushed to the cinema hall. I saw Pawan lying in a pool of blood inside the hall and rushed him to the hospital,” Raju said. Eyewitness said they had seen the severed limbs of those who died inside the cinema hall which was packed to the capacity on Sunday evening.

“It was a ghastly sight. I saw a child’s body reduced to smithereens entangled with the seat. Severed limbs were lying all around,” said Mohammed Irshad,an eyewitness, who was sitting at the back of the cinema hall when the blast ripped apart chairs in the front second and third rows of the 600-capacity hall.
Two others who had to undergo emergency amputation operation of one leg included 25-year-old Lallan Prasad and 21-year-old Ram Baran.


IN-HOUSE DEVICE TO EFFACE

In-house device to efface terror
New Delhi, dhns: The Union Home Ministry, on Monday, asked the owners of cinema and shopping complexes in the country to have “an in-house mechanism” to prevent violent incidents like the blast which took place on Sunday in a cinema hall in Ludhiana. 

Soon after the Sunday blasts at Ludhiana, all the major cinema halls here witnessed stepped up frisking of the cine-goers with increased number of metal frames installed at the gates. 

“People and owners of various shopping complexes and cinema halls should ensure an in-house mechanism to keep a constant vigil against those who wanted to perpetrate terrorism,” Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta said here. He put the onus of securing cinema halls as much on the security personnel as on the owners.

As the investigating agencies are trying to establish link between the Ajmer blast with the one at Ludhiana, the role of Babbar Khalsa International, an almost defunct Sikh terrorist outfit, is not ruled out. The Home Secretary refused to comment on investigations saying that he would not want to prejudge anything.