Cop arrested over detonator explosion in old city area

An official serving in the Special Protection Unit of the Sindh police has been arrested in connection with Saturday’s explosion in the old city area that had left two people injured.

Police on Monday said they had arrested Bilal Javed because he had brought a detonator to his friends, adding that the device had exploded when his friend Babar Shahid took it from him and accidentally removed its pin.

Two men had been injured in the explosion in the wee hours of Saturday. Following the incident, ambulances from welfare organisations transported the casualties to the Dr Ruth KM Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, where the injured were identified as Daniyal and Babar.

A heavy contingent of law enforcers, including police and Rangers, also reached the site of the explosion and cordoned it off. Experts from the bomb disposal squad had also been called in. Shortly after the explosion, the incident had been declared an accident. Bomb disposal experts later suggested in their initial report that the blast had occurred when a detonator containing a small amount of explosives blew up.

The report also stated that the detonator was of a hand grenade and contained a gram of explosives of aluminium material. Police had earlier claimed that the blast had occurred while a man named Peetal Daas and his friends were sitting around a bonfire.

Officials had said that when one of them touched a suspicious material found near the bonfire, the explosion occurred. Daniyal, the son of a policeman, and Babar were injured in the incident, they added.