Biswas at the hospital. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, May 13: An explosion in a scrap shop near New Jalpaiguri today injured one person.

The explosion occurred when Manojit Biswas tried to open a discarded deodorant canister at his shop near Binoy More in Shantinagar. It burnt three fingers of his left hand and a piece of the container struck his right eyebrow as well.

Memories of the twin blasts that shook Champasari in April 3 coupled with rumours fuelled by a TV channel that claimed Biswas was injured in a grenade explosion triggered panic among residents in the afternoon.

Three of the alleged bomb makers had been killed in Champasari. The fourth was later tracked down and arrested. In the next few days, three caches of arms were seized from different parts of the town.

Biswas said the deodorant container had been brought by a rag picker. “It was around 10am. The aluminium container was that of a deodorant. The rag picker was sitting outside the sop when I tried to open the container by hammering on it. Immediately it exploded,” said Biswas from the hospital.

A doctor of the Siliguri district hospital who had attended to Biswas said the injuries were not serious in nature. “He had minor burns on three fingers of his left hand and a bruise over his eye brow,” said T.K. Ghosh, the superintendent-in-charge of the hospital.

Nilu Roy, Biswas’s neighbour who was present near the shop when the container burst, said the sound of the explosion had numbed his senses for a moment. “Then I started running towards the shop for I thought something was wrong. I saw that Manojit’s left hand was injured and there was blood over his right eye. I thought he was seriously injured and immediately took him to hospital.”

Police at the New Jalpaiguri outpost have ruled out foul play. “The youth was injured after the container exploded. There were no explosives inside the container. It was an accident,” said Pankaj Thapa, the officer-in-charge of the outpost.