BHUBANESWAR : About 24 schoolchildren were injured,  five of them critically, when a handmade crude bomb exploded in a classroom of a government-run high school in the coastal Odisha city of Cuttack on Monday. All the injured students have been admitted to hospital. The local police have begun investigations.

 “The bomb exploded when 58 class IX students were sitting inside their room and the class teacher was about to start the day’s business after the roll call. When we heard a big sound we rushed to the class to discover about 20-25 students injured under the impact of the blast. We immediately rushed the injured students to hospital,” said the headmistress of the co-ed Ayatpur High School, Namita Mohanty.

The total strength of the class is 85. The school has about 1,000 students.
The school suspended classes after the incident.

The school authorities as well as the police, after preliminary investigation, suspect that the bomb was brought to the school by a student in his school bag and perhaps exploded when it fell from the bag.

“A scientific team has already reached the spot and begun a thorough investigation. We are also conducting a detailed probe as to under what circumstances the student managed to bring the handmade bomb to the school,” said a senior Cuttack district police official.

The state government’s school and mass education department has also ordered a separate departmental probe into the incident.Cuttack, Odisha’s erstwhile capital and a major business hub, is notorious for activities by anti-socials and gangsters. Criminal gangs hurdling bombs at business establishments demanding “protection money” and other such incidents are common in the city. In fact, on Sunday night there was a bomb attack at a medical store in the city. The owner of the shop had a providential escape though the business establishment was badly damaged.

However, this is the first time a bomb blast has occurred on the premises of a school. Ironically, state police headquarters is located in Cuttack which is about 30 km from the present state capital Bhubaneswar.

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, on Monday ordered that the government would bear all the medical expenses of the students injured in the blast in Cuttack school.

“Expressing his deep concern over the incident, the chief minister has ordered that the medical expenses of the injured students will be borne by the government”, a press statement released by Patnaik’s office said.

 Meanwhile, the incident has also triggered fear and apprehension in the minds of the parents.
“It is certainly a frightening development. Nobody had expected such a thing to happen in a school. All the parents will have extreme fear in their mind while sending their children to school. The government should ensure such a thing never happens in an educational institution, particularly in a school, again”, said Prakash Jena, a Cuttack resident over telephone.