Hazaribag Blast: Habibi Nagar Explosion Rekindles Terror Fears, Investigation Underway

Hazaribag: The Wednesday explosion at Habibi Nagar, which killed three persons, has stirred the harrowing memories of a similar explosion in the locality in 2016, which killed six people.Hazaribag district is linked with 1989 riots and several clashes thereafter.Habibi Nagar is densely populated by Muslim community and lies adjacent to Khirgaon, one of the largest Muslim localities in town.Two Pakistani nationals and Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, wanted in the attack on the American Centre in Kolkata case, were gunned down by security forces at Khirgaon in January 2002.The incident marked the first confirmed terror link to Hazaribag.Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist, Taufiq, was arrested from his Kashmir House residence located at Pugmil in 2012. Pune police arrested ISIS terrorist Shahnawaz Alam, a native of Hazaribag in 2023. Another terrorist of al-Qaida, Faizan Ahmad, was held from Lohsighna in Hazaribag in 2024.While the cause and nature of Wednesday’s explosion are being probed, a senior police officer told TOI that investigation teams have been directed to examine the case, keeping in mind earlier terror-related incidents and bomb-making accidents reported from the locality.“Wednesday’s blast raises suspicions because of the district’s past security concerns. We are not ruling out any angle at this stage. Forensic inputs, technical analysis and intelligence assessment would b epart of the probe,” a police officer said.The incident also triggered concern within intelligence circles over the recurrence of such explosions in a long-identified sensitive zone despite sustained surveillance after the 2016 blast.Security experts believe repeated incidents in the same area point to systemic lapses, including possible gaps in local intelligence gathering and follow-up action.Police said no conclusions would be drawn until the probe is over but admitted that the blast has again placed Habibi Nagar and Khirgaon under tight vigil.Hazaribag MP Manish Jaiswal asked, “How does an area under a security shadow for long continue to be a scene of such incidents. The nature of blast hints at something big. The areas needs tight security search and sanitisation exercise.”