LAHORE, Oct 8: One of the injured of triple blast at the city’s congested Garhi Shahu area succumbed to his injuries in the Lahore General Hospital on Wednesday morning.

Nazir Ahmad, 35, was injured in the third explosion while he was going pass the juice shops. He lost battle to wounds hours after his hospitalisation.

Meanwhile, the owners of the three juice outlets blown up by unidentified people on Shalimar Road near Garhi Shahu Chowk on Tuesday night, have no inkling about the elements involved in the sabotage. They expressed ignorance about any threatening calls and letters by miscreants, but confirmed that unmarried couples used to frequent their shops.

However, a Qaumi Tajir Ittehad (Garhi Shahu) office-bearer claimed that three suspected people, one of them sporting a beard, were seen roaming around in the market with shopping bags in their hands.

“I learnt about the threatening calls after the incident, but we did not receive any such call before that,” Rizwan Ahmad, owner of Al-Rehman juice corner-cum-beauty saloon, told Dawn on Wednesday. He said before he closed the shop on the police call after first blast at Chinno juice corner, some unmarried couples were present at his shop and they were immediately asked to go.

Ihsaanul Haq, brother of Chinno juice corner owner Inaamul Haq, expressed shock and claimed that the blast was surprising for them.

The QTI secretary-general, Abdul Saleem Khan, told Dawn that some ‘religious-minded’ people would visit the shops and also meet him with the advice to disallow entry of boys and girls into the market.

He said some traders had witnessed three people clad in Shalwar Kameez and wearing joggers in the market for two hours. “The low-intensity blasts are apparently aimed at instilling fear among the citizens and giving warning,” he said.

A police investigation told Dawn that the law enforcers suspected involvement of a Lahore-based organisation in the blasts. He did not disclose the name of the group. Evidence was being collected to reach the culprits, he said, but there was no breakthrough so far.

SSP (Operations) Chaudhry Shafiq Ahmad said a team was working on different leads to trace the elements behind the blasts. He said the possibility of some religious elements’ taking the extreme step could not be ruled out.

The market consists of around a dozen juice shops, as many beauty saloons and several other outlets. The Queen Marry school and college are at a stone’s throw where the attendance remained thin on Wednesday.

“I had brought only eight girls to the school in the morning; two of the frightened girls returned home with me. Normally, I bring 26 students in the morning,” said van owner Haji Zahid of Ghora Chowk. He said half of the school vans did not come after parents refused to send their children.

Most shops in the market remained closed a day after the blast and the police investigators and Bomb Disposal Squad officials collected necessary evidence from the spot.

The Qila Gujjar Singh police registered a case against unidentified people under sections 302, 324, 3/6 of Explosives Act and 7-ATA.