The remains of the car in Janardhan Reddy’s convoy that was blown up. File picture

Hyderabad, Sept. 9: Death had knocked on N. Janardhan Reddy’s door dressed in khadi and bearing flowers.

A youth who arrived on the morning the Congress leader was leaving for Tirupati introduced himself as an admirer and handed Reddy a bouquet.

He later got into the seventh car of the former chief minister’s 15-vehicle convoy.

“We will be at the spot in 10 minutes,” the youth in khaddar shirt and trousers whispered into his cellphone, other occupants of the Toyota Qualis have told police.

Reddy’s Mercedes was the second car in the convoy.

Minutes after the mine blast ripped the fourth car at 6.20am on Friday — killing its three occupants — he disappeared into the fields, but after he had flashed an SMS message: “Mission failed (guri tappindi)”.

A youth is in police custody now, but it could not be confirmed if he was the same man.

Bomb experts have identified the explosive used in the bucket bomb as nitroglycerine. It was planted in one of two huge cement pipes below a culvert just 8km from Reddy’s farmhouse in Vakadu, from where the convoy had started. About 20-30 kg of the explosive was detonated through gelatin sticks, triggered by a camera flash.

A helmet, gelusil tablets and a voltmeter — used to check the flow of current in wires — have been found at the spot.

The police suspect that students of an engineering college in nearby Vidyanagar might have helped the Maoists. The college is one of a cluster of educational institutions set up by Reddy.

Vakadu is 50km from Nellore, a coastal district town 447km from Hyderabad. The Nallamala forests, a hub of Maoists, are nearby.

Police investigations have revealed that a five-member special action team headed by Nallamala Maoist secretary Tella Panduranga Reddy alias Sagar alias Pratap was behind the blast. It was supervised by state Maoist leaders Ashanna and S. Appa Rao.

The Maoists are believed to have escaped in the melee after the explosion. A search is on in the villages surrounding Vakadu, with special check posts on the highway to Chennai. “The spot is just 10km from the sea, so we are also checking if the Maoists escaped by the sea route,” the police said.

“It appears that Maoist top guns had done a recce of the area two months ago and the wiring was put in place when the culvert was under construction as part of the Telugu Ganga canal works,” said Lakshmi Reddy, the superintendent of Nellore police, who is under fire from Congressmen for alleged intelligence failure.

Police sources said that 15 days ago, an intelligence report mentioned an attack on a VIP in the Guntur, Nellore and Prakasham area. Mosques and railway stations were put under watch as the police thought it might be an alert for another terrorist strike after the Hyderabad blasts.

“We checked the possible targets in Nellore town and found no explosives anywhere,” a police official said.

No one thought the target would be an ailing Congress MP, who was on his way to receive an honorary doctorate along with his wife Rajyalakshmi, a state minister.

Twice earlier, Reddy had been offered doctorates for his contribution to education but had refused them because he was then the chief minister.

So the youth who arrived at his door at 5am and said he wanted to accompany Reddy to Tirupati to see him being honoured was welcomed without question. The suspected Maoist pointman travelled up to the blast site with Rajyalakshmi’s brother Hemanth Kumar Reddy in his car.