Church Street blast probe: Ten crore calls under lens on day 10

BENGALURU: With no leads even 10 days after a low-intensity explosion rocked the city, the police is scrutinising ten crore phone calls made in the city during the days before the blast.

With little or no evidence from the blast site on Church Street – thanks largely to inquisitive passersby – the police are now confronted with a needlein-a-haystack situation. Besides lakhs of phone calls made from the Church Street area before the blast, they will examine up to ten crore calls in a wider radius, a police officer said.

The pipe bomb that went off outside the Coconut Grove restaurant late evening on December 28 killed one woman and injured three. Investigators have no clarity on the whereabouts of the bomb planters. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Abhishek Goyal told ET: “As of now, we don’t know where the investigation is taking us.”

The only promising lead the cops has failed to produce results. Clues provided by the remains of a Telugu newspaper at the site took the police to Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh. “We believed there was a strong lead,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Alok Kumar, who heads the probe team. The police even escorted a group of men suspected to be involved in the blast to Bengaluru. “But we couldn’t substantiate our suspicion and we left it,” he said.

City Police Commissioner MN Reddi held a meeting on Tuesday with officers as well as a National Investigation Agency team. Details were not revealed.