AMRITSAR, India (AFP) — Indian police said that an explosion that killed six people and injured 32 in a packed cinema hall in northern India was a "terrorist" bombing.
Hundreds of people -- mainly poor migrant workers -- were crammed into the theatre in the industrial city of Ludhiana in Punjab state to watch Sunday's late-night screening of a new Bollywood comedy.
"It was a bomb blast. It is a terror act. We are trying to find out the exact nature of explosives used," said a senior police official on condition of anonymity.
The Home Ministry in New Delhi said it was still "too early" to draw any conclusions, but added the blast "appeared to be a terrorist attack."
But another home ministry officer said officials were investigating a possible link between Sikh separatists and Islamic rebels.
"There are several lines of investigation. One angle being probed is whether the blast was triggered by Sikh rebels with the help of Islamic militants," he said, adding the explosives used could have been provided by the latter.
Punjab police chief N.P.S. Aulakh told reporters in Ludhiana that he did not rule out the possibility of a Sikh rebel group, Babbar Khalsa International (BKI), being involved in Sunday's blast.
Former Punjab police chief Kanwar Pal Singh Gill, who is credited with wiping out the militant movement, however pointed a finger at another Sikh group called the Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF), which is known to have links with Kashmir-based Islamic rebel groups.
Both Sikh rebel groups want an independent Sikh state called Khalistan carved out of India.
The two have been dormant since the defeat of the militant movement in Punjab in the early 1990s, but the BKI was suspected of triggering two blasts in cinema halls in New Delhi in 2005 in which one person was killed and about 60 injured.
According to a security website run by Gill, both groups are "chiefly supported by Pakistan and some non-resident Indian Sikh groups."
But Punjab's chief minister, Prakash Singh Badal, ruled out a revival of the Sikh rebel movement.
"People of Punjab have no sympathy with terrorists as they have gone through worst days... there is no chance of a revival of terrorism," he said.
Sunday's blast was the most recent in a series of explosions across India in recent years that have been mostly blamed on Muslim extremists allegedly linked to Pakistan and Bangladesh.
India's 140 million Muslims celebrated Eid al-Fitr on Sunday, marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, and one of the biggest Islamic festivals.
Several of the wounded were fighting for their lives in hospital on Monday.
The latest blast came after two people were killed and nearly a dozen wounded on Thursday in a bomb blast at one of India's most revered Islamic shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan.
India sounded a nationwide alert after that attack as the country prepares for the main Hindu festival season starting on October 21 with Dussehra, which marks the triumph of good over evil.
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