A suspicious blast on the evening of 20 October at an under-construction building on Jeremiah Road in Pulakeshinagar, east Bengaluru, injured two men, police said. The Hindu reported it on 21 October. The cause is not established. No perpetrator is confirmed and no deliberate attack is proven.

The incident was on the fourth floor. The two men were taken to Bowring Hospital. One lost a finger; The Hindu describes the injuries as minor. Hindustan Times identifies them as Suraj and Allauddin. A witness quoted by HT speaks of an eye injury and a lost hand; those details are not from the police tally and we do not treat them as a closed fact.

A preliminary inquiry found suspicious items in a bag, sent for forensic examination. The bag is believed to have been found by the injured men, who were hurt when they opened it. HT writes of a battery-like object in a bag on the same floor. The nature of the object remains unconfirmed.

Karnataka home minister Priyank Kharge asked people not to believe rumours. He said an investigation was under way and that a clear picture would follow the laboratory report, expected on the evening of 21 October. Until that report, we do not publish a cause.

Kharge said it had not been established whether the blast came from a chemical reaction or from an improvised explosive device. Because it was a blast, the authorities opened a suo motu investigation. No complaint had been filed, he added.

Bengaluru police commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh said IED involvement could not be confirmed at this stage and asked people not to panic. Anti-terror, bomb-disposal and forensic teams visited the site, according to press reports.

The commissioner described the place as a house with interior work under way, unoccupied, in a building where other families were already living. One of the injured men had pressed a button on an object he called a battery torch; that is the injured man’s statement, not the inquiry’s conclusion. One remained in hospital, the other had been discharged, he said.

HT notes that the building owner is identified in the press as Abdul Rahman and that there is, for now, no confirmed evidence of a deliberate attack. Until the FSL report, the closed fact is the Pulakeshinagar incident: two injured, a suo motu inquiry, cause unconfirmed.

Image: Saad Faruque, building under construction in Bengaluru, 15 November 2012, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons; illustration, not the Jeremiah Road building.

Sources consulted: Two injured in suspicious blast at under-construction building in Bengaluru - The Hindu; Explosion at under-construction building in Bengaluru, initial probe points to battery-like object - Hindustan Times.