Balangir: A crime branch team investigating the gift bomb blast case of Patnagarh shifted its focus on Thursday to the shops here from where Punjilal Meher, the accused in the case, claimed to have purchased raw materials to make the bomb.

The team is visiting all the licensed explosive shops in town for inquiry. The crime branch has identified 84 shops in the town that sell explosives during Diwali.

Meher had had revealed he had used gunpowder to make the bomb that made with raw materials purchased from various shops in Balangir during last year's Diwali.

Another team of the crime branch has been interrogating the accused since Wednesday at the kendu leaf inspection bungalow in Patnagarh. The crime branch has taken remand of Punjilal Meher for another five days.

ASP (crime branch) Anil Kumar Das said: "We have benefited a lot from the first phase remand and will like to use the second phase remand meaningfully."

The letter that Meher had written to the Balangir police superintendent and which might have his fingerprints on it has been sent to the Central Forensic Laboratory in Gandhinagar. Another team of crime branch has been carrying out investigation in Raipur from where the accused had sent the gift bomb parcel. The team is trying to track the auto driver and the cycle-rickshaw puller, the only witnesses in the case.

On February 23, newlywed Soumya Sekhar Sahu and his grandmother Jemamani died while unwrapping a gift parcel that exploded. Soumy's wife Reema Rani was critically injured and admitted to the plastic surgery ward of SCB hospital in Cuttack. She was released from the hospital some days ago.