Kathmandu, February 22

At least three people were injured, one seriously, when a ‘powerful’ bomb went off at the entrance of the office of telecommunications service provider Ncell in Nakkhu, Lalitpur, at around 8:00pm today.

According police sources, the injured have been identified as Singha Prasad Gurung, Pratiksha Khadka and Urusha Manandhar. While Manandhar was rushed to Kathmandu Mediciti Hospital, Gurung is being treated at B&B Hospital and Khadka at Alka Hospital.

Of the three, Gurung has sustained serious injuries to his leg.

Nepal Police Spokesperson Uttam Raj Subedi said preliminary investigations suggested the bomb might have gone off just as Gurung kicked the container containing explosives.

He said neither any group had taken responsibility of the incident nor any pamphlet was found at the incident site.

This image shows shards of glass shattered from roadside showrooms littered on the street outside Ncell office in Nakkhu, Lalitpur, on Friday, February 22, 2019. The blast outside Ncell office left three people injured. Photo: Naresh Shrestha/THT

However, a high-level source at Metropolitan Police Office, Kamalpokhari, said police suspected the explosion might have been carried out by Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal. “It is learnt that the party had sought donation from Ncell sometime ago. We suspect the explosion has been carried out in revenge. We, however, do not know whether Ncell paid the donation or not.”

The source said police were looking at CCTV footage to identify those who planted the bomb, and directed police across the Valley to stay high on alert.

The explosion was so powerful that people residing as far as 500 metres away could feel the reverberations. Window panes of nearby buildings have been shattered, while a pit was formed at the explosion site. Blood stains could be seen near the explosion site.

Local Anil Ghimire, 30, said the explosion was so huge that window panes of his house located around 500 metres from the explosion site reverberated. “After I heard a huge bang and felt reverberations in my house, I rushed outside to see what had happened,” he said. “I could not muster courage to reach the explosion site and observed from a distance. Glasses of nearby houses were shattered.”

Meanwhile, a bomb disposal squad of Nepali Army defused a pressure cooker bomb kept inside Angan restaurant at Kamaladi.

Police suspect it could be a coordinated incident because the bomb at the restaurant was found around the same time as the explosion at Nakkhu and the nature of the explosives was similar.