Balangir: Police on Wednesday arrested the prime accused and mastermind in the parcel bomb blast case that killed newly-wed Soumya Sekhar Sahu and his grandmother in Patnagarh on February 23.

DGP Rajendra Prasad Sharma had said on Tuesday named Punjilal Meher, the English lecturer of Jyoti Bikash College in Bhainsa, as the mastermind and executioner in the case.

Meher had professional past enmity with Soumya Sekhar's mother Sanjukta Sahu, who had replaced him as the principal of the Jyoti Bikash College in October last year. On Wednesday, Meher was produced before the SDJM court in Patnagarh and later remanded in judicial custody after his bail was rejected. IG (crime branch) Arun Bothra said that cracking the parcel bomb blast case was "the most difficult case in his career".

He said that Meher was the lone accused in the case as he had "planned the crime, manufactured the bomb and had even gone to Raipur to courier the parcel".

"Meher was too cunning and had executed his plan so meticulously that it was almost impossible for anyone to know about it," he said.

Bothra said Meher was working on his plan for the last seven months since Diwali. "He is suspected to have picked up the nitty-gritty of making the bomb from the Internet. But he had deleted all the search and browsing history from his computer. Yet there were some downloaded pages that showed how a bomb is made. However, all the search and browsing history can be retrieved in the forensic laboratory," he said.

He said Meher had come to Balangir during Diwali to purchase gunpowder that was used to make the bomb.

"He made the bomb himself with knowledge from the Internet and travelled to Raipur on his own to courier the parcel. He travelled without ticket to avoid the CCTVs at the railway ticket counters. He didn't even go to the courier centre and asked the auto driver to courier the parcel offering him extra money," the IG said.

Bothra hailed the work of Balangir police saying that it had already prepared ground before the crime branch took over the case.

He attributed the motive of the crime to the enmity between Meher and Sanjukta over the post of college principal. "Meher wanted to take revenge and the whole family was his target. However, we are working on it," he said. The IG said that the crime branch had prayed for 14 days remand of Meher. The crime branch on Wednesday morning released all six who had been detained and grilled by the cops for the last three days.

The arrest of Meher has invited mixed reactions. While relatives of Meher came out in his defence and termed the crime branch as an inefficient, others hailed it for cracking the case.

Jayanta Meher, a relative of the accused, said: "He is not guilty in the case. We want a high-level inquiry into the case by agencies like CBI or NIA," he said.

Sanjukta said it gave her relief that truth had finally come out. Sanjukta said that she had lot of differences with Meher.

"We had differences over the principal's post, but I never thought he would commit such a heinous crime for it. I was transferred to Bhainsa College in 2014. Despite being senior to him I was barred from taking over as the principal as he didn't cooperate. It was after the department of higher education intervened that he handed over the charge to me in 2017," she said.