Patna, March 1: Four child rag pickers were critically injured this morning when one of the eight crude bombs they collected naively from a nearby garbage exploded at Gandhi Maidan, triggering panic in the heart of the state capital.

The bombs were smaller in size than a standard gutkha container. The boys, all aged between four and seven years, had found them in a box stashed in a garbage bin adjacent to Gandhi Maidan police station around 9.30am. Assuming it to be a prized collection, they slipped it into a sack.

After scaling the fence of Gandhi Maidan, the rag pickers sat on the historic rally ground. When one of the boys tried to break open one of the small containers (actually bombs) with a stone around 10am, it exploded and inflicted injuries on all four of them.

The four injured children have been identified as five-year-old Rohan, his four-year-old brother, Sohan, seven-year-old Bhola and four-year-old Shiva.

Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Alok Kumar, who rushed to the spot with superintendent of police (city) Shivdeep Lande and other officers after the explosion, said: “The injured boys did not have any idea about the small boxes being bombs. They probably wanted to know what was there inside them and tried to break open one of them. As they hit the box with a stone, the blast occurred,” the SSP said.

The police officers claimed that the magnitude of the blast was not huge but the splinters of the bomb left the four children profusely bleeding. They started running in shock and awe.

A few people stopped the boys and rushed them to Patna Medical College and Hospital for treatment. Bhola sustained serious injuries in his right hand.

With a large number of people gathering around the spot after the blast, the police had a tough time to keep them at bay. The bomb squad defused the rest of the bombs later.

The explosion barely a few metres away from the Gandhi Maidan police station and the SSP residence has puzzled the cops. They expressed their ignorance on how somebody could dare to dump bombs in a garbage bin close to a police station.

“It is difficult to say anything at this moment. Some criminals might have hidden the bombs in the trash bin. The innocent boys found them by chance,” an officer at the spot said.