Hyderabad twin bomb blasts: Unsung hero carried bomb on his shoulder for 20 minutes
Hyderabad: A college bag that was found hanging from a bicycle on the footpath in front of Venkatadri Theatre in Dilsukhnagar, contained a bomb. Carrying the bag for over 20 minutes home guard, Macharla Venu, realised later that he had been carrying death on his shoulders.
Recollecting the horrifying moments on the day of Gokul Chat and Lumbini Park blasts, Venu told Deccan Chronicle how panicky he felt after learning that the bag he had carried for a long time was an IED.
At around 6.45 pm, about an hour before the first blast went off at Lumbini Park, one of the accused persons, Akbar Ismail Choudhary, had placed a bag containing the IED on a bicycle. The personnel of Malakpet traffic police station who were clearing the pedestrian way on the busy day of August 25, found a bag hanging from the bicycle. One of the home guards, present along with the towing crane, picked it up and informed his higher officials about the abandoned bag. He was asked to take the bag and put it to a side on the crane so that if any claimants approached the police, they could hand it over.
“At around 7.30 pm, minutes before the blast at Gokul Chat, I found the bag. My superiors asked me to pick it up and wait for the person who might have lost it to approach. I took the bag and carried it on my shoulder for about 20 minutes. I did not know what was in the bag and just put it on the crane for some time. When my superior got an alert about the blasts, he asked me to check what the bag contained,” said M Venu, a home guard who was then working at the Malakpet traffic police station.
Venu, who unzipped the bag and placed his hand inside, felt some electrical wires. He was frightened to put his hand further inside and screamed for assistance.
“It looked like a college bag. When the official asked me to check what the bag contained, I opened it. As I put my hand inside, my right hand came in contact with some electrical wires, all connected. I realised it was a bomb. I did not know if it would explode or fail to explode. My heart stopped for a moment,” explained Venu, reliving the terror.
“Following the orders of the superiors, along with another home guard D Nayak, I shifted the bomb to an open place at Gaddiannaram; the bomb squad was already on its way by that time. They found that the detonator was not connected properly and the clock was not functioning, which saved my life”, said the home guard, currently working for the Anti-Corruption Bureau, and who was never in the news for his brave act.
Akbar Ismail Choudhary, who had placed that bomb, also reportedly had told investigators that he was afraid of inserting the pencil cell, which would ignite the primary explosive and so did not put it in properly, which finally saved many lives.
