Anindyee’s batchmates at Salt Lake’s Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan on Monday mourn her death in the Pune blast. Picture by Pradip Sanyal.

Pune, Feb. 15: A teenaged waiter from Nepal working at German Bakery has told investigators he was about to remove the unclaimed backpack on Saturday evening but got distracted when a customer entered the café and sought a bottle of mineral water for which he paid Rs 200.

The 19-year-old waiter (name withheld by The Telegraph), who is currently recovering from wounds suffered in the explosion, has identified the customer as “Swamy”, who, he said, was a regular at the popular café.

The waiter is recuperating under heavy security at Sassoon Hospital where he lies with 30 per cent burns in his legs and chest.

The police are looking for “Swamy” to question him, but have clarified that the person could well have been a bona fide customer in a hurry.

“I told the police that around 6.30pm on Saturday, I noticed a red-and-blue ‘air bag’ under a table in the open-air seating area of the crowded bakery. It kept making me uncomfortable that nobody was taking it away. So I alerted the manager of the bakery about the unattended bag. He told me somebody must have forgotten it and asked me to keep it aside,” the waiter told The Telegraph.

Just as he was about to pick up the bag, the waiter said, “Swamy” drew his attention.

“One person was standing outside, he was a regular at the café. We knew him as Swamy-saab. He entered the café and appeared to be in a hurry. He asked me to quickly fetch a bottle of mineral water and handed me cash, which I thought was a hundred-rupee note. When I went inside, I realised there were two notes of Rs 100 each. I came out with the bottle, which he almost snatched from me and rushed out without bothering about the change,” the waiter said.

The explosion, at 6.52pm, occurred minutes after the customer left, killing nine, among them three from Calcutta, siblings Ankik and Anindyee Dhar and their friend Shilpa Goenka, and two other girls, P. Sundari and Vinita Gadani, who were with them.

A Pune police officer told The Telegraph that the blast seemed to have been set off by a remote-controlled device.

“As investigators, we cannot negate the possibility that this customer’s aim was to distract the waiter. More so, because after spotting the bag at 6.30pm and informing the manager, the waiter had reached out to retrieve it around 6.45pm. Somebody did not want him to pick up the bag right then because it seems to have been slated to go off at the pre-planned time,” the officer added.

A source in the anti-terrorism squad (ATS) agreed. “We do not know whether the bomb that went off precisely at 6.52pm had a timer-controlled detonator or was triggered remotely. But preliminary reports suggest it was triggered by a remote-controlled device,” the source said.

Police said they would match the sketches of the man based on the waiter’s description with CCTV footage taken from a hotel opposite the café.

“This ‘Swamy’ could very well be innocent. But the waiter says he was seen standing outside the bakery for a while before rushing in. And Rs 200 for a bottle of mineral water? It seems Swamy had something else on his mind,” said the Pune police source.

Duo on footage

The CCTV footage from two cameras installed on the top floor of the five-star Hotel , facing German Bakery, shows two men with a bag. While the younger of the two men is seen holding the bag, his middle-aged companion is seen talking on his cellphone.

The footage is a bit hazy and the colour of the bag is not clearly visible, but it is a backpack of the same shape and size that was placed at German Bakery.

The duo are then spotted leaving the place in an auto-rickshaw after placing the bag in the café.

The bag containing the explosives was blue and red.

The waiter has also told investigators that a group of four young men, “who looked like they were in college”, had been sitting at the table under which the bag was spotted half-an-hour or so before the blast and they also carried backpacks. It was this table the Dhar siblings and their friends occupied once the four men had vacated it.

The waiter, a frail teenager, is recuperating at Ward Number 2 in Sassoon Hospital, guarded by at least 40 policemen.

Hospital sources said the waiter has been enlisted as a “female patient” in the records for security reasons after the National Investigation Agency and ATS realised his importance yesterday afternoon.

Doctors, nurses and paramedics are thoroughly screened by security forces before being allowed in.