Date - 6-Feb-2016
Place - Vellore, Tamilnadu State, India
The crater formed after the object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on
the campus of Bharathidasan Engineering College, near Natrampalli, in
Vellore on Saturday.
One person was killed and three others were injured when
an object believed to a meteorite fell on the campus of a private
engineering college near Natrampalli in Vellore district in northern
Tamil Nadu early on Saturday.
According to police
sources, a loud blast was heard near a water tank shortly after midnight
on the Bharathidasan Engineering College premises in K.Bandarappalli
village. Kamaraj, a college employee, who had gone to drink water
suffered serious injuries and was declared dead when taken to the
Vaniyambadi Government Hospital. Three others suffered minor injuries.
Window panes and wind screens of buses parked nearby and the water tank
were broken in the impact of the blast. A crater was formed at the site
of blast.
Though there was suspicion that it was a
bomb blast, preliminary investigation by forensic and bomb experts
showed no sign of any explosive substance at the scene. Pieces of a rare
kind of stone were found and samples taken for analysis by scientists.
“We
can rule out the possibility of any terror angle or sabotage. Not a
single ingredient pertaining to any kind of explosive was found at the
site. We suspect it to be a meteorite fall,” a top police official told
The Hindu
on Saturday. After a similar blast was reported in a paddy field at
Alangayam in the same district on January 26, a senior Astrophysicist of
the National Physical Laboratory, Ahmedabad, came to the district for a
study. “The scientist was camping nearby and rushed to the college soon
after hearing the news of the blast. We are convinced that it is a
meteorite that fell with high velocity. In the earlier incident, local
people remember having seen an object falling from the sky in the
field,” the official said.
A special team of the Bomb
Detection and Disposal Squad, led by Deputy Superintendent of Police
Asir Vijay Kumar, inspected the scene and ruled out the use of grenades.
Vellore Superintendent of Police Senthilkumari also visited the spot.
Investigators were trying to check if the college had any CCTV camera
covering the disturbed area.
