The picture of the woman released by the police

Siliguri, April 14: Police today released the picture of a woman said to be a key suspect in the April 3 Champasari blasts and the subsequent seizure of improvised explosive devices in Mallaguri and Gurung Bustee.

The woman’s picture was found among documents thrown up by raids since the twin blasts, which killed three alleged bomb-makers.

One of the dead was a woman, but her face was so badly mutilated that officers are unsure if she and the woman in the picture are the same person.

The lone blast survivor, Dipen Rai, has identified the woman in the picture as a frequent visitor to the two houses where the IEDs were found – both rented out to young Nepalese, the police said. This has been confirmed also by a tenant detained from the Gurung Bustee house, Bikash Basumatary.

Three other tenants of the house, all Nepalese girls, are missing. Told by the landlord that the three had claimed to be trainee nurses at a nursing home, the police raided it this morning and detained six Nepalese nurses. The three Gurung Bustee women are not among the six.

One of the detained nurses, Ganga Gurung, gave officers the address of a house in Sevoke “where some girls from Nepal lived”.

The police raided it tonight and were told by landlady Jyotsna Sarkar that she hadn’t seen two of them for the past two days. The others were “on duty” at various nursing homes. The police said they would check up on these six nurses, too.