Balangir: The Crime Branch Thursday took Punjilal Meher, the mastermind in the Patnagarh wedding gift bomb blast case, on remand for six days.
The agency had Wednesday sought a 14-day remand of Punjilal from the court of the sub-divisional judicial magistrate, Patnagarh. However, the court has allowed the Crime Branch a six-day remand of the accused.
A team of Crime Branch will grill Punjilal at the Balangir circuit house to quiz him on various aspects. The sleuths, in the course of their investigations, zeroed in on Punjilal as the mastermind in the sensational case.
Director General of Police RP Sharma had said Punjilal had planned, masterminded and executed the crime single-handedly. He operated meticulously without leaving any clue behind. He made the bomb himself, carried it in the shape of a gift parcel and booked it at a courier company near Raipur railway station, Sharma had stated. The motive of the crime, the police said, was jealousy. Soumya’s mother Sanjukta was made principal of the Jyoti Bikash College at Bhainsa, replacing Punjilal, IGP crime branch Arun Bothra had stated at a press meet.
In a bid to eliminate the family of Sanjukata, Punjilal had planned the crime. He had gathered gunpowder during last year’s Diwali and, using it, prepared a crude bomb and tested it before sending the parcel bomb. The police seized crackers, gunpowder, a laptop and a pen drive from Punjilal, he had said.
So meticulously had Punjilal tried to execute his plan that he even did not buy the railway ticket to Raipur himself so as to avoid being caught in CCTV camera. An anonymous letter of Punjilal helped the Crime Branch crack the case. He had posted the letter stating the bomb blast was a fallout of a love affair, Bothra had said. During probe, the cops stumbled upon a deleted file from Punjilal’s pen drive. The file turned out to be that of the letter which Punjilal had typed in his laptop. It was sent to the SP after taking out a printout of the same from a nearby shop.
Newlywed techie Soumya and his grandmother Jemamani were killed and his wife Reema received severe burn injuries when the bomb in the guise of a gift parcel exploded February 23.
