Category : General

Chennai: A loud blast left window panes broken and walls cracked in a few houses near Salem on Monday evening. While police suspect that the blast was been triggered in a stone quarry, local villagers said the nearest quarry was some 7 km away from the affected place. According to police sources, people in Karipatti, Veeranam and Anmapatti heard a deafening blast around 4 p.m.
The shock-waves broke window panes in some houses. Cracks were found on the walls of a house and a shop in Mettupatti Paganur village. Local people told police that they saw a plane flying at a very low altitude.
" We have a suspicion that the blast occurred in a stone quarry. There is also a possibility that workers drilling a borewell might have caused an explosion to break rock surface. There is no evidence of any plane flying at low altitude in the area," Inspector-General of Police ( West Zone ) C.Sridhar told The Hindu.
He said special teams were formed to investigate the incident. No suspicious objects were found in the affected areas.
The incident comes a month after a mysterious blast claimed the life of one person and injured three others on the campus of a private engineering college near Natrampalli in Vellore district.
Though the State government claimed that it was a meteorite fall, scientists in national laboratories said no meteorite properties were found in the samples given to them.
In a separate development, the State police have stepped up security at vital installations amidst reports of possible terror attacks in major cities in the country on the Maha Shivarathri day.

( Madurai edition of The Hindu, Tuesday, March 8, 2016 )
Courtesy : MPS