Boy injured in bomb blast in Bengal; parties trade charges

A nine-year-old boy was injured in a crude bomb explosion in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district on Sunday, with the opposition BJP and the ruling Trinamool Congress accusing each other of stockpiling explosives.

A police official said the class three student, Yusuf Mondal, suffered serious injuries in the hand when he mistook a crude bomb lying in a field close to his Basirhat town house to be a ball. He started playing with it when it exploded.

The boy was initially taken to a hospital in Basirhat, but as his condition turned critical, he was referred to a hospital in Kolkata.

Police later recovered another crude bomb from an abandoned shed located nearby but no arrests could be made.

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BJP state president Sukanta Majumdar asserted that the Basirhat incident was the latest instance of bombs being stockpiled by TMC goons to terrorise political opponents.

Though the panchayat polls are over, the "reign of terror prevails", he told reporters.

Alleging that law and order has collapsed in the state, he said, "West Bengal is sitting on the heap of gunpowder. Such incidents testify that the end of TMC is nearing as it cannot trust people and increasingly become dependent on arms and explosives."

TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh, on the other hand, claimed that the incident exposed the opposition's game plan to foment trouble in the state and give a bad name to the ruling party.

"The opposition has stockpiled bombs and weapons to disrupt the peaceful Bengal. They want to show the state in poor light and malign the ruling TMC to the rest of India," he said.