A 55-year-old homemaker suffered critical burns when a crude bomb fell on the ground from a stockpile of firewood behind her house and exploded in East Midnapore district on Thursday morning.

Nihari Das Adhikari has been admitted to Tamralipta Medical College Hospital, where doctors stated her condition to be critical.

She is a resident of Kalicharanpur under the jurisdiction of Nandigram police station. Nihari, a widow, lived alone at the house. Her daughter was married off.

Police said the woman suffered serious burn injuries to her right hand and leg.

Kalicharanpur had been on boil for the past few days over the Kalicharanpur Cooperative Society elections, which were deferred.

The BJP and the Trinamool Congress accused each other of hiding bombs to create unrest in the polls.

Nihari’s neighbour Dibakar Das said: “The cooperative elections were supposed to be held on June 15, but the administration postponed the voting for fear of violence. Today’s unfortunate incident happened as someone must have hidden a bag filled with bombs behind the woman’s house to use them during the polls. As the polls were deferred, they took the bag away, but a bomb somehow remained there. If there had been more bombs, a bigger blast could have happened today.”

Soon after the explosion, Nihari fell to the ground and blood oozed out of her right hand. The injured woman was first taken to Nandigram Super Specialist Hospital and later admitted to Tamluk Medical College Hospital.

Local BJP leader Abbas Baig said: “We have won one of the 12 seats in the Cooperative Society elections unopposed. Realising that they would not win the rest of the seats, Trinamool leaders had stored bombs at various places. They wanted to create violence on polling day to scare voters. One of those bombs exploded today.”

Trinamool denied the allegations.

TMC block president Bappaditya Gagg claimed that some BJP activists from Kalicharanpur, accused of murdering a Trinamool worker, had recently secured bail and stockpiled the bombs.

Trinamool and BJP have been engaged in a bitter fight in the area ever since Suvendu Adhikari defeated chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Nandigram in the 2021 Assembly polls. The ruling party’s desperation to have control over the constituency and Adhikari’s effort to hold on to his bastion led to repeated confrontations between the two parties.

The Nandigram police said they were investigating the incident.