A child and his mother scribble messages at a shraddhanjali organised by The Telegraph for blast victims in the city on Tuesday. Actors Pranjal Saikia and Akashitora Dutta as well as deputy superintendent of GMCH Abhijeet Sharma were among those who joined the campaign. Picture by Eastern Projections

Guwahati, Nov. 4: The security forces not only failed to pre-empt the terror attacks despite having prior information, they even let bystanders stamp out crucial forensic evidence from the lower Assam blast sites.

How and why this happened were the two questions that were discussed threadbare as Dispur began a post-mortem of the security lapses that led to the serial blasts last Thursday.

Forensic Science Laboratory sources said they have received samples from Kokrajhar only this evening and are still waiting for samples from Barpeta Road and Bongaigaon.

Vital evidence was lost in most of the lower Assam blast sites because of police’s failure to cordon off the areas after the explosions.

The sites were left open for people to scavenge on debris for five to six hours after the blasts.

They were marked off only when a team from the National Security Guard arrived in the evening.

Dispur brought out its post-mortem knives today after several senior ministers raised questions about security lapses during a recent cabinet meeting.

The police’s failure to contain mob mayhem in Ganeshguri after the blasts also came under the scanner.

The ministers slammed the director general of police, R.N. Mathur, for failing to prevent explosions in places like Ganeshguri in Guwahati and Paglasthan in Bongaigaon, which have been repeatedly attacked.

“What are the police doing to protect these areas from being attacked again and again?” the ministers asked.

A home department official said the “post-mortem” would try to figure out why the security agencies failed to take adequate measures even though a central agency had alerted them two months ago about such strikes.

The agency had even specified the cities and town that were on the terror radar.

The security lapses are likely to be discussed at the Northeast security meeting in New Delhi tomorrow.

Senior police and home department officials today went into a huddle to discuss how the police force can be modernised and vacancies can be filled up as quickly as possible.

During the cabinet meeting, the DGP had said there was a lack of proper training facilities for the police in the state.

At today’s meeting, the officers proposed enlisting help from neighbouring states to train Assam’s police force.