Click to play videoNew Delhi: Three persons - including a 10-year-old child - were killed and 70 injured as bombs ripped through communally sensitive town of Malegaon in Maharashtra. Sixteen policemen were among the 70 injured.
One person died in police firing in the violence that followed. Authorities fear the casualty figure might rise
The explosions occurred around 9:30 pm on Monday night. Initial reports say crude bombs were used in both places and that the bombs were mounted on Hero Honda motorcycles parked near the blast sites.
Police are exploring whether timer devices were used to set off the explosives. Forensic teams are picking up evidence from the blast site in Malegaon as well as examining the motorcycle.
The blast in Malegaon happened outside a building where the SIMI used to have its office before 2001.
Immediately after the blasts, the situation became tense in Malegaon where a mob attacked a police station. Police resorted to firing to bring the situation under control.
An eyewitness, Salim, told CNN-IBN that since the area was a Muslim-majority area, nobody expected this blast.
"We thought that this was a safe place. This is the place where people read the namaz," he said.
Modasa Blast
Around the same time as a bomb exploded in Malegaon, a blast ripped through Modasa in Gujarat on Monday night killing one person and injuring 10 others.
Fifteen-year-old Nizammudhin Godhi was the only casualty in the Modasa Blast. His father told CNN-IBN that they had rushed him to the Dusra Civil Hospital but that he died soon after.
Five of the people injured in the blasts are in serious condition and as in the case of the Malegaon blasts, authorities fear that the toll may rise.
Gujarat Home Minister, Amit Shah has blamed the SIMI and the Indian Mujahideen for the Modasa blast. He says it was not the work of one person, but a well-organised terror network.
Police say that the pattern of the Modasa blast is similar to the blast that took place in Mehrauli in Delhi on Saturday. Just as in Mehrauli, the Modasa bomb was planted in a crowded marketplace and the men who planted it came by a motorcycle.
The bomb was of a relatively low intensity and killed one person. Gujarat police officials have said it may have been detonated using a timer device.
Monday's attack came hours after police in Lucknow arrested an alleged member of the Indian Mujahideen in connection with some of the recent bombings, police spokesman Suren Shrivastava said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack in the town of Modasa in Gujarat state. In July, the Indian Mujahideen group claimed responsibility for a series of blasts that killed at least 45 people in Gujarat.
In addition to the Gujarat attacks, the group also claimed responsibility for September 13 explosions in New Delhi that killed 21 people and wounded 100, bombings in the western city of Jaipur in May that killed 61 people, and a series of explosions in the northern Indian cities of Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad last November that killed 16 people.
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