PESHAWAR, March 29: The city police chief has formed two teams to investigate Monday’s Khyber Bazaar blast. Advocate Latif Afridi, a former MNA, has claimed that his rivals had planted the explosive device to kill him.

However, Capital City Police Officer Habibur Rehman said he could not rule out the possibility of terrorism and he had formed two teams to investigate the incident from different angles. The local senior superintendents of police for operations and investigation are heading the teams.

Terrorism or a feud between the senior lawyer and his rivals could be the cause of the blast, he told Dawn.

“It was a time bomb fixed in a motorbike parked by a young man, who left 15 minutes before the explosion,” said an official.

“I was the target of the blast by my two rivals who are proclaimed offenders in a case of killing four members of my family,” Mr Afridi told this correspondent.

He said that he was parking his car in front of his office at Haroon Mansion when the bomb exploded. “I took a little extra time to park my car as someone was reversing his vehicle.... and that time saved my life,” Mr Afridi said.

His car was damaged and his driver was injured in the incident, he said. Mr Afridi alleged that Zahid Sayal, Johar Hashim and members of their family had killed his six relatives, including two brothers.

The former MNA alleged that his rivals had links with Maulvi Namdar, an aide of religious leader Mufti Munir Shakir, whose men had attacked the supporters of another cleric Pir Saifur Rehman in Bara on Monday. “But the attack on me had no links with the fighting,” he maintained.

The lawyer said that last month a man belonging to his rival group was killed and the Bara tehsildar was injured in an attack by the opponent religious group but he was nominated in the case.

The anti-terrorism unit of the Federal Investigation Agency had initiated inquiry after the blast but stopped it when the lawyer claimed that it was a case of personal enmity.