“I was sitting on my chair when suddenly there was a loud bang. Through a thick cloud of smoke, I saw a woman and a sadhu in a pool of blood. The rubbish bin had been ripped apart, and an autorickshaw stood with its glass smashed and roof sagged,” said Puran Singh, who mans an NDMC toilet in front of the blast site on Barakhamba Road. Two buses, a Blueline and a Whiteline, were standing some distance from the bin; the explosion could have been catastrophic if they had been nearer.

At almost exactly the same time as the Connaught Place blasts, two bombs went off in bustling M Block Market in GK I, at 6.36 pm and 6.38 pm. Five people were injured. Police officers said these bombs too had been kept in garbage bins. “As soon as the first blast took place, people panicked and started running here and there. I was speaking to them over the public address system, asking them to assemble in the park, when the second blast took place,” said O P Shardha, municipal councillor of the area.

But Delhi’s Saturday evening nightmare wasn’t over yet. Some young ragpickers found three plastic bags in the Connaught Place area, all of which turned out to be live bombs.

The first of these was discovered in another Central Park garbage bin just after 7 pm, and was defused by the National Security Guard and Bomb Disposal Squads.

At around 7.15, another ragpicker found what he thought was a ticking clock in a rubbish bin outside Regal Cinema on the Outer Circle. Beat Constable Suresh took it from the boy and, after removing a wire, dug it in the ground.

... contd.