MUMBAI/DELHI: A mystery chip looking like a "transformer with wires" in the right foot of one of the deceased in Wednesday's blast set off a chain of events that culminated in senior officials saying they could not rule out the possibility of a suicide bomber playing a part in 13/7. J J Hospital doctors first saw the chip while taking X-ray images of corpses pouring in for post-mortem examination.
| "He's dead, Jim." "Dr. Quincy, how do you -- OMG!! What is that alien spidery thing in his foot?" |
Senior hospital officials refused to name the deceased without confirmation of what the chip might have been. But sources told TOI he might have been one of the victims wheeled in from Zaveri Bazar and added that he might be a migrant from Rajasthan.
Officials said there could be two reasons for finding the chip with wires inside the body. Union home ministry secretary (internal security) U K Bansal said: "One of the possibilities is that the person might have been standing near the bomb and so some parts of the bomb were embedded in the body. But there is another possibility, that it could have been planted in his body. We can't say anything right now."
| "I can say no more." |
"All foreign bodies recovered from the body of victims have been handed over to police for forensic investigation," said a source from the hospital. "The object could be a detonator or might have been embedded inside the body by the blast impact," he said but added it was definitely not any medical device.
The body parts of the deceased person, who had the 'chip' in his limb, were in a bad shape. His limbs were crushed into several pieces and his other body parts were badly damaged too. "His body was severely damaged and there was hardly any part that was intact," said the source.