An explosion heard by none

When a cocktail bomb explodes, it does so with a loud bang, often louder than a transformer bursting. When multiple bombs detonate one by one, the explosion can be distinctly identified.

Two such bombs allegedly exploded one after another around 10pm on January 29 on North Ibrahimpur school road in Kafrul, during an Awami League rally. Shafiqul Islam Babul, organising secretary of Kafrul thana AL, promptly filed a case accusing 65 men from the local BNP unit, of plotting and executing the bomb explosion.

Here’s the catch; even though it took place in the middle of a busy Dhaka street, nobody else except for local AL men seemed to know a bomb explosion took place.

According to the case’s first information report (FIR), two bombs were detonated in a loud explosion, and the noise caused panic and unrest among the participants of a rally. A witness listed on the FIR named Md Salahuddin also reiterated that the bomb explosion made a loud noise.

“We had held a rally of 300 to 400 people, when suddenly multiple bombs were thrown targeting us. The noise was extremely loud, and in the situation, we could not see who had detonated the bomb,” he said.

Such a loud noise, surely the general public must have known or seen something?

Yesterday afternoon, The Daily Star went to the spot where the explosion supposedly happened, but failed to find any witnesses.

It is a road with shops on either side -- a tailor shop, a couple of general stores, an internet café that burns the midnight oil -- but nobody seemed to know what explosion we were talking about. For most of them, the fact that a crude bomb explosion allegedly took place, was news.

Here’s what a security guard of a house said: “I am on duty every night. I did not hear or see anything. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t.”

This newspaper spoke to two dozens of people from the shops and the homes, but nobody saw or heard anything. The FIR lists out two shops as the exact location where the explosion happened, but when interviewed, employees of the shops said they neither saw, nor heard an explosion.

Sub-inspector Shahidur Rahman of Kafrul Police Station, investigating officer of the case, said they arrested a suspect named Nurul Islam.

“I got the case, I have just started investigating,” he said.