Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel have been deployed across Coimbatore on Tuesday, following the incident in which a man was charred to death in a car explosion triggered by an LPG gas cylinder blast. Security has been increased across the city.
The RAF has been sent in to conduct security and search operations in public spaces, including bus stops and train stations. After a man was burned to death when the automobile he was riding in exploded at Ukkadam, close to the well-known Sangameshwarar temple in the city, on Sunday morning, Coimbatore City Police detained five individuals late on Monday night.
The accused, identified as Mohammed Dhalha, Mohammed Azarudeen, Mohammed Riyas, Feroz Ismail, and Mohammed Navaz Ismail, have been remanded to police custody.
The body of the deceased recovered from the blast site has been identified as 25-year-old Jamesa Mubin.
The images from the nearby CCTV camera appeared to show five people allegedly removing a gunny bag from Mubeen’s home on Saturday, according to the police.
Police claim they found materials necessary to construct crude explosives, including potassium nitrate, aluminium, and sulphur, during a search of Mubin’s home in Ukkadam’s Kottaimedu neighbourhood.
We have also recovered nails and ball bearings from the spot where the explosion happened. We have identified the source of the cylinders and the car. This could not be a suicide attack, “said state Director General of Police C Sylendra Babu.
K Annamalai, the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Tamil Nadu, asserted that the incident was a terrorist act with ties to ISIS. He also raised concerns about the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) administration’s reluctance to properly investigate the explosion.
Taking to Twitter, Annamalai said, “Coimbatore Cylinder Blast is no more a ‘cylinder blast’. It’s a clear-cut terror act with ISIS links. Will CM Stalin come out in the open and accept this? For the past 12 hours, the TN government has been withholding this information. Is this not a clear failure of the state intelligence machinery and the DMK Govt.? ”
He further claimed that terror elements were active in the state.
“The accused who died during the course of planning this attack had clear-cut links to ISIS and was handled from outside the country. Still, some of the elements are active in TN soil. Go mercilessly after these nodes. “CM M.K. Stalin, please come out of your hiding and own your failure,” he added.