Pressure cooker wrapped in black tape sparks bomb scare in Savar

Police cordoned off an open field beside a mosque in Savar’s Sadhapur this morning after a pressure cooker wrapped in black tape was found there, raising suspicion that it could be a bomb.

Imran Hossain, in-charge of Bhabanipur Police Outpost and a sub-inspector of Savar Model Police Station, told The Daily Star that police reached the spot around 8:00am after receiving a call through the national emergency service hotline.

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“We found a pressure cooker wrapped in black tape. We suspect it could be a bomb, so we informed the bomb disposal unit. They are on their way,” he said.

“The entire field has been cordoned off,” he added.

The bomb disposal unit is expected to examine the pressure cooker and determine whether it contains any explosive material.

According to SI Imran, local residents found the pressure cooker, along with clothes and a copy of the Quran, inside a blue plastic drum at the field of Laltek Ghora Mosque in the Goper Bari area of Sadhapur late Tuesday night.

The residents subsequently took the pressure cooker out of the drum and placed it separately in the mosque field after it appeared to resemble a bomb, he said.

Locals told police that three unidentified people had left the plastic drum at the mosque field during the night and fled, SI Imran added.

The incident comes hours after the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime unit and the Bomb Disposal Unit recovered several crude bomb-like objects, nine pipe bombs and bomb-making materials from a rented flat in Savar’s Shyampur last night.

Police had earlier arrested a man in Hemayetpur, whose information led to the operation.