BANGALORE, India, 30 December 2005 — An attack on a science conference in southern India in which a professor was killed and four delegates wounded was likely the work of a terrorist group, police and a top official said yesterday.
A gunman sprayed bullets at delegates to an infrastructure management conference in the technology hub of Bangalore as their meeting was ending Wednesday night and they were leaving for dinner.
Although only one person opened fire before fleeing, police said the attacker may have had accomplices. Four hand grenades were found at the scene.
“Preliminary investigations by the city police and vital clues available so far indicate that it was a terror attack,” said Dharam Singh, chief minister of Karnataka state of which Bangalore is the capital.
“Terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba appear to be behind the attack,” Singh said, referring to a hard-line group that was also blamed by New Delhi for a deadly attack on its Parliament in December 2001.
No individual or organization had claimed responsibility for the shooting at the Indian Institute of Science, which killed New Delhi-based mathematics professor M.C. Puri and caused pandemonium among the 300 scientists attending the conference.
“The motive appears to create panic or fear psychosis in a city like Bangalore, which has gained a global reputation as the nerve center of information technology, defense, science and space activities,” Singh said.
Police too said it appeared to have been an attack by militants. “Though it is a bit early to confirm the nature of the shooting, evidence collected so far from the scene... has all the markings of it being a terror attack,” said B. S. Sial, director general of police in Karnataka. India’s space organization, headquartered in Bangalore, sounded an alert at its institutions across the country and the government stepped up security at important technology firms in the city, officials said. All state-owned and multinational companies were asked to strengthen their security, as police launched a major hunt for the attacker, sealing off exit points.
“Our investigations so far point to the intruder having used an AK-56 and firing about 50 rounds,” said Bangalore Police Commissioner Ajai Kumar Singh.
