1 dead, two injured in Imphal blast

A bomb blast on Wednesday killed a man and injured two women just metres away from a convention centre in Imphal that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to inaugurate on Saturday.

A bomb blast on Wednesday killed a man and injured two women just metres away from a convention centre in Imphal that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to inaugurate on Saturday.

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The explosion took place at the entrance of the ongoing Sangai Festival, a tourism event, at Hafta Kangjeibung ground in Imphal East district. A number of foreigners, including some from Thailand and Kenya, had put up stalls at the venue. The PM is to open the nearby newly built City Convention Centre.

The police suspect that militants belonging to the separatist group Kangleipak Communist Party, Military Council (KCP-MC) had asked a rickshaw puller, Mohammed Kora, who was killed in the explosion, to drop the bomb at the site. He was purportedly paid Rs20 for the task.

The KCP-MC is said to have been involved in a series of deadly explosions and attacks on security forces in the past. On Tuesday, the group had called a 72-hour general strike in Manipur—which ends on Thursday morning—to protest the recent killing of one of its cadres in an alleged fake encounter.