LAHORE: Some ‘cracker blasts’ in the crowded area of Garhi Shahu spread panic in the area, alerting the law-enforcement agencies on Saturday.

Initial call made to the police by the locals said there were the hand-grenade blasts in an under-construction house. However, the policemen who reached the site along with bomb disposal squad, forensic experts and Rescue 1122 staff later declared the blast-like sounds were due to some ‘fireworks’ that went off accidentally.

Some witnesses, including the nearby shopkeepers, rejected the police claim, saying the intensity of the blasts was much more than that of the fireworks suspecting that it was ‘something else’.

One of the shopkeepers suspected that it might be the cracker blast as the locals spotted some shells too.

Civil Lines Division SP Afzal Khan rejected the claims, saying someone had stored fireworks in the under-construction house. One of the fireworks, probably China-made, resembled a hand grenade exploded when a worker held it, he said.

“It is a fact the blast sound was not usual but it is also a fact that fireworks exploded with no injury to the workers present there,” Mr Afzal said while quoting the bomb disposable squad officials who, according to him, had collected samples from the scene for further investigation.

The SP said one of the workers had also been taken into custody to reach those who had stocked fireworks there.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2018