Do-it-yourself bombs kill 13 in UP

Six blasts in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad by home-grown terror groups

NEW DELHI: The series of six blasts that ripped through Lucknow, Faizabad and Varanasi on Friday, killing at least 13 people and injuring more than 60, confirm that home-grown, do-it-yourself (D-I-Y) terror groups are now able to procure and detonate explosives at will. There is no need for a high-power external conspiracy backed by international jehadi groups to set off mayhem.

Bombs are now a commodity on the terror circuit, and all it takes is a few hundred rupees to assemble one. Some sugar, coffee or even cow urine, a Rs50 clock, a kg or more of potassium permanganate (or hydrogen peroxide) and an equally cheap detonator is all it takes to set off blasts similar to the ones that rocked the three UP cities.

The six explosive devices, placed on bicycles near court premises, went off in the space of 15 minutes — between 1.15 pm and 1.30pm. While three blasts rocked the Varanasi civil court premises, two explosions occurred in the Faizabad court. In Lucknow, while one explosive went off, another was detected soon after the first blast.
Sources in the intelligence agencies say it costs just a few hundred rupees to make a bomb and plant it with deadly impact. “You don’t need any external input, no RDX from Pakistan,” says a veteran terror watcher.

What requires a little coordination and sophistication is the synchronisation of a serial blast, but that too is “achievable without much fuss,” says an army explosives expert who has handled several blast cases.

Most of Friday’s blasts involved the use of low-intensity bombs  made locally. What caused so many deaths was the amount of nails, glass and other sharp items stuffed into the bomb, and the lack of immediate evacuation facilities.
Over the past few months, the J&K police and intelligence agencies have arrested a few Pakistani explosives experts who have said they are now focusing on training Indian sympathisers in making explosives.

The methodologies they have disclosed shouldn’t cost more than a few hundred rupees per bomb. For example, one of the combinations of explosives suggested is nine parts of potassium permanganate to one part of sugar, aluminum being an optional. In another combination, coffee powder could be used as filler in a combination of ammonium nitrate and aluminium.

Another method is to use cow urine by boiling it down to 10% of its original volume, and mixing it with other chemicals for a bomb.

A pack of explosives needs a detonator and a timer to complete the bomb. The timer can even be a clock worth just around Rs50. If a terrorist were to use a mobile phone, the cost will go up that much.

Bomb-making has been simplified, thanks to a host of factors, including the internet. This has been proven in the London underground bombings, and repeatedly in India in recent times, where deadly blasts have been triggered by bombs made out of locally available material.

“What we need to do is strengthen our locality level policing. It is the constables who roam the streets who must be alerting us about something unusual happening,” says a senior intelligence official.