KARACHI, June 20: The Nishtar Park blast inquiry tribunal asked the bomb disposal unit chief on Tuesday to draw and submit on Wednesday a sketch showing the likely trajectory of pellets released by the explosive device on April 11 at the Eid-i- Milad function.

Inspector Mohammad Iqbal had submitted that the blast was caused by an improvised plastic bomb tied to the unknown bomber’s body at a height of four or five feet above the ground level with pellets ejecting in all directions, right and left, back and forth and up and down, within a radius of 45 feet.

The tribunal evidently wants to ascertain why the pellets closed in on the centre of the stage like guided missiles and hit congregationists, who had already offered their Farz prayers and were standing or sitting in different positions.

If the suicide bomber was standing on the ground at a distance of eight feet from the stage in the middle of the first row as believed by the inspector, the pellets must have travelled at least 11 feet and scaled a height of about six feet in order to hit the first row in the middle of the stage.

According to the investigation officer, however, the blast occurred at a distance of 27 feet from the stage, and the tribunal asked the witness to draw two sketches, the second depicting the trajectory from 27 feet. The sketches must clearly show the angle at which the pellets shot across.

Two divergent versions at variance with the police stance have been thrown up by the tribunal’s proceedings so far. According to Sunni Movement counsel Javaid Ahmed Chhatari, the blast might have been caused by a remote-controlled high-intensity device hung on a tree with pellets targeting the centre portion of the stage. But he has yet to produce any evidence in support of his contention.

According to Maulana Asghar Dars, head of a rival Sunni faction, he was told by Qari Abul Rehman, an eye-witness, that “something went up from the stage itself, exploded in the air and fell on the stage.”

The maulana, however, declined a tribunal request to contact the qari and persuade him to appear before it and record his evidence.

Justice Rahmat Hussain Jafferi of the Sindh High Court, who constitutes the tribunal, had to repeat most of the questions at least twice to extract information from the inspector.

He told the witness that his evidence was crucial as he was not only a bomb disposal expert but also the first police official to visit and inspect the site at 7.20 pm after the blast, which occurred at 7.05 pm.

The inspector said he was obstructed twice by 300 or 400 people standing near the stage after the incident, but ARY correspondent Mahmood Shaikh came to his rescue.

Except for blood ‘spots’ on carpets in the centre, he said, the stage was intact and did not look like the scene of a blast. All the victims, dead and injured, had been shifted by the time he reached the park, though a couple of ambulances were still parked there.

Justice Jafferi asked searching questions about the various articles shown by pictures of the stage and it was with some difficulty that the inspector recalled that an upturned rostrum on the stage.

But it did not like having been damaged in a blast. There were, he said, no lights on the stage but it was quite visible in the light of tubes and bulbs illuminating the park.

No pellets could be found on the stage or the ground underneath it. Blood had leaked to the ground from the stage, he said. There were sizable pieces of human flesh on the stage but there was no human organ.

Out of the 15 vertical pillars supporting the stage, the seventh in the middle carried the most pellet holes. Two pillars on either side also bore pellet marks. The horizontal pillars, the one above the stage had more pellet holes. An area of 18 feet was hit the most.

On the ground, which was also well lit, he found six to eight millimetre thick holes, which indicated the size of the pellets and his guess was that they were released by a five-kilogram device. Shows and clothes were littered all around but the confusion that followed the blast destroyed crucial pieces of evidence. Many objects were picked up by people from the ground.

In reply to questions earlier, he described the types of explosives and detonators. He did not agree with a suggestion by Advocate Chhatari that he violated discipline by not carrying the town police officer’s order for a second sweeping of the stage in the evening.

He said the TPO did not know that the stage had already been cleared by a bomb disposal unit team after sweeping. When he contacted the TPO, he was only told to check that had been parked outside the public meeting venue in the meanwhile.

The inspector impliedly contradicted sub-inspector Musaab Husain’s statement that the disposal unit was not adequately equipped or properly trained.

He also denied that it could not defuse a live bomb when he said that he and his colleagues had defused live bombs several times. ARY programmes director Khalil Warsi, meanwhile, presented to the tribunal a movie of the dismantling of the stage on May 12, a month after the blast.