Grenade lobbed at Kalia’s house; 2 held

A grenade was hurled at the outer section of former Punjab minister and senior BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia’s residence in the Central Town area here around 1 am on Tuesday, triggering panic reactions from various quarters throughout the day.

The explosion damaged a partition gate of the frontal verandah, caused small craters on the floor, smashed a few windowpanes and partly damaged Kalia’s Innova car and a motorcycle parked inside the main entrance.

CCTV footage showed the grenade being lobbed by a man from a moving e-rickshaw. The e-rickshaw driver first came from the Shastri Chowk side to conduct a recce and then returned with the man seated behind who hurled the grenade to his left.

By the afternoon, the two accused were arrested. Aged 22 to 30 years, they were identified as Harry from the Garha locality and his relative Satish Kumar Kaka from Bhargo Camp, said an official. The arrests were reportedly made on the basis of CCTV footage, which traced the e-rickshaw movement through cameras installed in the city and monitored from the central control room. The police are also learnt to have detained two handlers.

Kalia was asleep in the house when the blast occurred. His sister and nephew too were inside. The BJP leader, who rushed out on hearing the explosion, said, “At first, I thought it was a transformer blast. It took me a while to realise my house had been attacked.”

The Division No. 3 police station is merely about 400 metres from Kalia’s residence. “My gunman called up the police station, but no one responded. I rang up the Commissioner of Police and the Assistant Commissioner of Police, but none of them took my calls. The gunman then visited the police station to alert them about the attack,” said Kalia.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Manpreet Singh and Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police Sukhwinder Singh were among the first few police officials to reach the spot. Commissioner of Police Dhanpreet Kaur arrived around 4.45 am. By then, several BJP leaders, including former MLA Sheetal Angural, had started converging at Kalia’s house to enquire about his well-being and express solidarity with him. All through the day, politicians cutting across party lines made a beeline to the attack site.

Punjab