Coimbatore LPG blast: Police refuse to rule out 'terror' angle, question nine persons

Not ruling out a “terror angle” to the LPG cylinder blast onboard a car in which the occupant, a 25-year-old man, was killed in Coimbatore in the early hours of Sunday, the Tamil Nadu Police on Monday began questioning nine people who were in touch with the deceased in the days leading up to the incident.

Jameesha Mubin was killed instantly as an LPG cylinder inside the car he was driving exploded near a temple in Ukkadam in communally-sensitive Coimbatore on Sunday morning.

The police are refusing to rule out terror angle not just because Mubin was one of the five persons to be questioned by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2019 in connection with the Easter bombings in Sri Lanka, but also because of materials recovered from his house after Sunday’s incident.

However, there is no concrete evidence against Mubin so far to say he was planning an attack on Sunday, police sources said, adding that CCTV footage shows Mubin and three of his accomplices carrying a heavy object from his house. Though there is no clarity, investigators assume the heavy object could be two LPG cylinders that were in the vehicle that exploded – while one went up in flames, another was intact.

“There is no case registered against him. But he was questioned for his links with Towheed Jamaat which is responsible for the bombings in Sri Lanka,” a senior police officer said, without revealing further details.

Police also found black powder, potassium nitrate, aluminium powder, charcoal, sulphur and matchboxes from Mubin’s house but say these materials are not enough to come to any concrete conclusion.

Also Read | Fire breaks out at a drugs production firm in Chennai

TN Director General of Police (DGP) C Sylendra Babu, who inspected the blast site on Sunday evening along with senior officials, inferred that Mubin could have been planning an attack in the future given the nature of the materials recovered from his residence.

The suspicion that the blast could have a terror angle also arose from the fact that it occurred near a temple on Sunday morning. But, police sources said, there is “nothing concrete” so far to connect Sunday’s incident to terror other than assumptions.

The sources added that police have formed six special teams to probe the incident. While two persons seen in the CCTV footage have been identified, efforts are on to identify the remaining individual – the two are believed to have told the police that Mubin asked them to help in “shifting his home.”

“In total, we are questioning nine people who were in contact with Mubin in the last few days before his death. The investigation is continuing,” a source said. Another official also refuted reports that the deceased was from Bangladesh.

The incident also comes weeks after an alert was sounded across the country following a ban on Popular Front of India (PFI). Coimbatore has always been communally-sensitive especially after the 1998 blasts killed 58 people in which BJP leader L K Advani had a miraculous escape.

While Leader of Opposition Edappadi K Palaniswami demanded a thorough investigation to find out whether this was an “accident” or a “pre-planned” attack, Tamil Nadu BJP called it a “clear cut terror attack” and asked the DMK government to own up the failure of the state intelligence network.

“Coimbatore Cylinder blast is no more a ‘cylinder blast’. It’s a clear-cut terror act with ISIS links. Will @CMOTamilnadu come out in the open & accept this? Is this not a clear failure of the state intelligence machinery & DMK Govt? The accused who died during the course of planning this attack had clear cut links to ISIS & was handled from outside the country,” Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai tweeted.