India’s border state, Punjab, was put on high alert on Tuesday (May 5, 2026) following two blasts near security forces installations, one in Amritsar and another in Jalandhar.
India’s Punjab shares a major border with Pakistan’s Punjab, and is a state that has faced long years of insurgency since the 1970s.
The two reported blasts triggered a political slugfest with the ruling party and the opposition engaged in a war of words over security and law and order issues.
The first of the two blasts was reported from Jalandhar, where a scooter parked outside the Border Security Force (BSF) regional headquarters caught fire around 8 pm, with several locals claiming they heard an explosion.
A video of the incident captured a massive explosion, with a bystander, jolted by the sound and impact, sprinting away from the spot.
Later, in Amritsar, another suspected explosion was reported around 11 pm near the Khasa Cantonment in the most important city of Punjab.
Security forces personnel rushed to the spot immediately after the explosion was reported. No injuries were reported in the incident.
Amritsar Superintendent of Police Aditya S. Warrier said the Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS) and Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) teams were deployed to examine the blast site and to collect evidence.
“We are verifying how many blasts occurred and the exact cause,” Warrier was quoted as saying. He added that the collected samples were sent for detailed analysis.
Meanwhile, another senior Punjab police officer claimed the Khalistan Liberation Army (KLA), a terrorist outfit, took responsibility for the Jalandhar blasts.
The officer said police were verifying the claim of the KLA, including the involvement of Pakistan gangster Shahzad Bhatti in the incident.
Jalandhar Police Commissioner Dhanpreet Kaur later said the police had prima facie concluded that a parked scooter had caught fire, though the terrorism angle was not ruled out yet.
The exploded scooter’s owner is a courier delivery executive and suffered minor injuries in the incident. He reportedly had stepped away from the scooter when it exploded. The scooter owner was fully cooperating with the investigation.
Security agencies cordoned off the blast location and deployed dog squads, apart from forensic and probe teams.
But the two blasts came just days after an attempt to blast away rail tracks in Punjab’s Patiala’s Rajpura region on April 27, where the bomb planter had died in the explosion.
The series of blast incidents has triggered panic in the state and raised concerns for the security agencies.