Hours after arresting a 49-year-old man for allegedly planting a tiffin bomb inside Rohini district court to kill his neighbour, who is an advocate, the Delhi Police on Saturday said the accused is a DRDO scientist who was locked in a court battle with the advocate, reports The Indian Express.
A senior police officer from the Special Cell told The Indian Express that the accused has been identified as Bharat Bhushan Kataria. “We have sufficient evidence against him, including electronic evidence which shows his presence on the court premises. Now we are trying to find whether anyone else was involved,” said the officer, adding that they have “ruled out any terror angle.”
Police had at the time said it was a “minor low-intensity explosion” and that the device was in a black backpack that was left in the courtroom by an unknown person. “Several teams of the Special Cell worked round the clock and the Northern Range, in the meantime, got a lead after checking the list of all the cases of courtroom number 102 on December 10. They questioned these men and asked if they had a previous rivalry with anyone. The police also started checking CCTV cameras and found footage of a man whom they found suspicious. One of the people who was supposed to appear for hearing that day then identified the man caught on CCTV as his neighbour, and the police soon picked him up,” said a senior officer.
During the investigation, the police found that Kataria’s neighbour had filed a case, of causing hurt, against him and in one of the last hearings, the court fined Kataria Rs 1,000 for unnecessary adjournment. “Perusal of the case file shows that matter is pending for arguments on the aspect of discharge/framing of notice since 2019 and the accused has twice been granted an opportunity to supply the copy of the judgments relied upon by him, to the complainant. Such being the case, a cost of Rs 1,000 is imposed upon the accused to be payable to the complainant for this unnecessary adjournment,” said Metropolitan Magistrate Pritu Raj in his order on November 1.
The police also found that Kataria has a property in Ashok Vihar and his rival stays in one of its floors. “The rivalry started between them around six years ago on the issue of installing a lift in the four-storey building. On December 20, there is a final argument in the case and charges should be framed against Kataria,” an officer said.
The Delhi Police had been informed by forensic experts and the National Security Guard (NSG) that the circuit of the “tiffin bomb” had not been assembled properly, due to which only the detonator went off and not the half kilogram ammonium nitrate-based explosives. “Forensic experts said the bomb was placed in a steel tiffin and had ammonium nitrate-based explosives. It also had a significant amount of shrapnel. But during assembly, it was not placed properly… It appears only the detonator exploded,” a police source had said at the time.
