Islamabad/Calcutta, June 2: A suicide bomber today blew up an explosive-laden car 200 metres from the Indian high commission, when Satyabrata Pal, the envoy and his wife Shreedevi were having lunch.

No one in the high commission was hurt in the explosion outside the Danish embassy that killed eight people but there was damage to the two-storied India House.

“Bomb — that was my first reaction,” said Shreedevi.

Almost all the window panes of the building were shattered by the explosion, which was so powerful that it displaced the heavy marble top of a table, and antiques and show-pieces cracked.

Indian high commission officials went to the house of the envoy, who is from Calcutta, to strengthen security but there were no plans to shift him from Islamabad’s upmarket Sector F-6/2, where many diplomatic missions are located.

Before news of the explosion had become known, Dhruba Pal, the envoy’s cousin in Calcutta, had called him around 1pm. “He told me that there had been a blast just five minutes back. I was shocked but was also relieved when he told me he was all right. We’ve been in touch since then.”

He said no one from the government had contacted the family here to “either inform or update us on the situation”.

Prasanta Pal, his maternal uncle and the son of Radhabinod Pal who was one of the judges in Japan’s war crimes trial, learnt about the blast on the radio and called Dhruba Pal who told him the envoy was safe.

The device was apparently hidden in a car that drove up and parked outside the Danish embassy, possibly in a backlash against caricatures of the prophet Mohammed, considered blasphemous by Muslims, in the Danish media.