It's Akhaura now

And, who carried out this act of barbaric cowardice? Well, speculations about the possible reasons have ranged from internecine conflicts in the shrine committee to religious extremists taking on 'shrine culture'.

From the looks of it, the authorities have taken a prompt action -- the officer-in-charge of the local police station has been suspended, the local administrative chief has been show-caused while two persons among the injured have been arrested by the police for their 'suspected involvement'. But don't they ring of familiarity with the initial handling of similar incidents in the past?

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The point that must not be lost on all concerned is that bomb blasts have become the order of the day. Even the elite force, Rapid Action Battalion, was not spared either. Only the other day bombs were hurled at them in Chuadanga.

Undoubtedly, easy manufacture, trafficking and availability of bombs and small arms are clearly indicative of a huge surveillance failure. The other weakness is that the investigations go nowhere; actually hay-wire they go with political finger-pointing.

To complete the list of shortcomings is the failure to prosecute the real culprits and hand out punishment to them. The net result has been the proliferation of the impunity culture with the heightened incidence of bomb blasts.

Let's hope that the authorities will wake up now and produce definitive results in their investigations, so that bomb blasts can be history and not a matter of endlessly growing forensic liabilities.