Launcher used in Mohali attack recovered: Punjab Police
Chandigarh, May 10: A day after a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at its intelligence wing headquarters in Mohali, the Punjab Police on Tuesday said it has recovered the launcher used in the attack and that a number of suspects have been rounded up.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the strictest punishment will be meted out to those trying to spoil the state's atmosphere.
Director General of Police (DGP) V K Bhawra said they have got a few leads and the case will be solved soon.
"A number of suspects have been rounded up and questioned. The launcher used in the attack has been recovered by the police and all leads developed in the case are being pursued meticulously," a statement issued by the Mohali police said.
The rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the third floor of the highly-guarded building in Mohali's Sector 77 at 7:45 pm on Monday, following which an alert was sounded in Punjab.
A case under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) and the Explosives Act has been lodged at Mohali's Sohana police station in connection with the incident.
The case was registered on the basis of the statement of sub-inspector Balkar Singh, the security in-charge of the intelligence wing headquarters.
In his statement, the sub-inspector said he heard the sound of an explosion on the third floor of the building and when he went there, he saw smoke coming out of room number 41.
He said a projectile, after hitting the wall and breaking the window panes, hit the roof of the room before falling on a chair.
Earlier in the day, the chief minister held a meeting with the DGP and top officials of the intelligence wing and directed the state police chief to probe the matter thoroughly.
Mann said nobody would be allowed to disturb the peaceful atmosphere in Punjab, adding that a few inimical forces are constantly trying to foment trouble across the state, but they will never succeed in their nefarious designs.
During the meeting, the DGP apprised the chief minister that a few suspects have been taken into custody for interrogation.
"Some arrests have been made and more will be made," Mann said after the meeting, apparently referring to the people who have been rounded up for questioning.
"Whoever tries to spoil the atmosphere of Punjab will not be spared and the strictest punishment will be given to them, which their coming generations will remember," the chief minister said.
Later, after a meeting with senior officials at the intelligence wing headquarters, Bhawra told reporters in Mohali that a projectile had hit the building and the explosive used in it seems to be TNT (trinitrotoluene).
"There was nobody in the room when the incident occurred. The impact was on the wall," he said.
"But it is a challenge and we are making all-out efforts to solve the case," the DGP added.
To a question on whether it was a terror attack or there was a Khalistani angle in it, Bhawra said whatever comes out of the investigation, "we will let you know".
"We have leads and we will soon solve the case," he said.
A preliminary investigation pointed towards the involvement of two men who came in a car and fired the RPG at the building.
The incident is being seen as a major intelligence failure as the building houses the state counter-intelligence wing, the special task force, the anti-gangster task force and some other units.
Police are also suspecting the involvement of gangster-turned-terrorist Harvinder Singh Rinda, who is believed to be in Pakistan, in the incident.
Rinda has been taking the help of local gangsters to carry out anti-national activities here, police sources said.
His name figured when a terror plot was foiled recently with the arrest of four suspected Pakistan-linked terrorists in Haryana's Karnal. Rinda's involvement was also detected in a hand-grenade attack at the Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) office in Nawanshahr last month.
The incident took place days after the arrest of the four suspected Pakistan-linked terrorists in Karnal and the arrest of two people that led to the recovery of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) packed with 1.5 kg RDX from Punjab's Tarn Taran district.
The explosion also came close on the heels of the recovery of an explosive device near the Burail Jail in Chandigarh on April 24.
Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national convenor Arvind Kejriwal said the explosion was "a cowardly act" and his party's government in Punjab will ensure that the culprits get the "strictest punishment", while the opposition parties described the incident as "disturbing" and "shocking".
Congress MLA and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Partap Singh Bajwa said the attack was worrying and posed a threat to the hard-earned peace in the state.
"RPG attack on Punjab Police intelligence wing office in Mohali is worrying. This after RDX was found few days back in Tarn Taran. Punjab has been through dark times already, we can't afford to damage the hard-earned peace of Punjab," Bajwa said in a tweet.
Punjab BJP chief Ashwani Sharma said the blast at the building of the intelligence headquarters is a matter of concern and expressed surprise over the local police describing it as a "minor" explosion.
The Mohali police had on Monday said a minor explosion was reported at the headquarters.
"The chief minister needs to pay attention to the deteriorating law and order situation in Punjab," Sharma said in a tweet.
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Huge turnout amidst SIR shadow caps ballistic battle for Bengal
Kolkata (PTI): The West Bengal assembly polls ended on Wednesday with what the election watchdog said was the state's highest-ever voter turnout of 92.84 per cent, leading to mouth-watering anticipation ahead of the announcement of results on Monday as both contenders sounded sanguine about their victory prospects.
Wednesday's second phase saw a 92.48 per cent turnout. The concluding phase covering 142 constituencies in south Bengal appears poised to match the first phase's record voter participation of 93.19 per cent by the time final numbers are collated.
The figures put the combined poll percentage over the two-phases at 92.84 per cent. The first phase of polling was held on April 23.
"This is the highest-ever recorded poll participation since Independence in West Bengal," it said.
The capital Kolkata recorded a turnout of 88.59 per cent, with Purba Bardhaman district topping the charts at 93.78 per cent.
The scale of participation sent out an overarching political message — practically every single eligible voter in the state felt personally invested in the electoral process and its outcome. They turned out in numbers large enough to make every narrative contested and every claim of momentum politically loaded. If the first phase tested whether the BJP could retain its north Bengal citadel, the second and final round was always the real battle for the saffron party on whether it could breach the ruling TMC’s southern fortress of Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas and Purba Bardhaman.
At the centre of the larger political fight stood Bhabanipur, no longer merely a south Kolkata constituency but Banerjee’s political refuge, her emotional home turf and the BJP’s chosen psychological battlefield.
Banerjee, 71, seeking a fourth consecutive term after 15 years in power, faced Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari in a prestige battle widely seen as a symbolic rematch of Nandigram, where Adhikari had defeated her in 2021 after crossing over from the TMC to the BJP.
Five years later, the duel shifted to Banerjee’s own bastion. For the TMC, retaining Bhabanipur is about protecting the chief minister’s authority in her own backyard. For the BJP, breaching it would puncture the aura of invincibility around Bengal’s most powerful political figure.
The constituency witnessed nearly 87 per cent polling, sharply up from around 61 per cent in the 2021 assembly polls and 57 per cent in the bypoll that brought Banerjee back to the House.
Banerjee – who usually votes later in the day and prefers staying indoors on the day of polls – broke convention and hit the ground before 8 am, moving through Chetla, Padmapukur and Chakraberia areas following complaints of alleged intimidation of local TMC leaders.
As she sat outside a booth amid heavy deployment of central forces, Adhikari arrived there and declared, "I will not allow any hooliganism." He opposed Banerjee moving around with "50-60 people" with her.
Banerjee accused the BJP of trying to "rig" the election by using central forces, election observers and officials.
"The BJP wants to rig this election. Polls in Bengal are usually peaceful. Is there a goonda raj here?" she said, alleging intimidation of TMC polling agents and late-night visits by CRPF personnel to party workers’ homes.
"The atrocities by the central forces are unprecedented. What is happening is not at all free and fair polls. But despite all this, we have full faith that we will win," she said after casting her vote.
Adhikari dismissed the charges as "frustration", claiming Banerjee had realised that "not a single vote was coming her way".
Tension flared again in Kalighat when Adhikari visited another booth, and TMC workers raised slogans against him. Police resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse the crowd as BJP supporters answered with counter-slogans. Reports of sporadic tension were also received from some other areas amid sights of long queues at polling stations, booth-level flare-ups, and political bickering.
In Kolkata's Entally, BJP candidate Priyanka Tibrewal alleged that the TMC's polling agents tried to assault her after she objected to overcrowding inside a booth and a lack of voter privacy.
In Panihati, BJP candidate and the R G Kar victim's mother, Ratna Debnath, faced protests, while her party colleague in Basanti, Bikash Sardar, alleged that "200 to 250 TMC goons" attacked his vehicle and assaulted his driver.
The TMC, meanwhile, accused the central forces of exercising brute force on the general voters at Falta's Belsingha village, especially women, who were beaten up during a move to disperse a crowd from near a polling station.The party also alleged CAPF high-handedness on women and a four-year-old child at Sathachhia in Howrah and on villagers at Ausgram in Purba Bardhaman district.
"In the name of ensuring security, central force jawans are not sparing even women who were brutally lathi-charged. TMC protests this highhandedness of the male jawans who exercised brute force on unarmed villagers. We draw the EC's attention to such illegal actions of the CAPF and ask the poll body to issue cease-and-desist orders against such use of force. We believe, people of Bengal will respond to this on EVMs," Anirban Banerjee, party spokesperson, said.
The BJP alleged that in several polling stations in Falta, the option to vote for the party was blocked using a tape over EVM poll buttons, and demanded repolls in the affected booths.
The state’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal said repolling was likely to be announced in booths where EVMs were found tampered with. However, the order will only be issued after authorities receive reports from the district election officer or election observers regarding allegations of EVM tampering, such as using tapes or a blot of ink, he said.
