Bomb blast in Pune

An abandoned backpack left under a table at the crowded German Bakery exploded on Saturday night after it was opened by an unsuspecting waiter.

Residents worried about security

For the residents of Pune, the attack has shaken their faith in the safety of their hometown. Donna D'Souza, a student and long-time resident of Pune, says:

"We always thought it was a peaceful, cosmopolitan city that was accepting of the people who come in. Example of the Osho Commune, where you have an influx of so many foreign nationals coming in, and there has never been anything like this that ever happened there. So it's really shocking. And we are the kind of people who would also visit there often, so it could have been any of us as well."

Diversity under attack?

The German Bakery was launched in 1988 by a local businessman Dnyaneshwar Kharose along with his associate Woody, a German who had come to the Osho Ashram in Pune. It was Woody's idea to start a bakery with an international appeal, says Dnyaneshwar Kharose's daughter Snehal:

"Foreigners specially found it difficult to find their kind of food in Pune. Because Osho Ashram was close to our place, they started the idea of German Bakery. With that, they came up with the name German Bakery, because it was mainly for foreigners. Even Indians liked the pastries, cakes and juices."

Since Dnyaneshwar's death in 1999, his wife Smita Kharose runs the business, helped now by her daughter Snehal. On a regular day, the German Bakery is usually teeming with customers who come for German Bakery's special cakes and health snacks. Deprived now of their only source of income, the Kharose family is struggling to come to terms with the tragedy.

Destruction of a symbol of friendship

The German Bakery's loss is also being strongly felt among its foreign fan base. One of them is Luc Didon, director of the Indo-French cultural centre in Pune, "It's so full of people of different origins and it's a symbol of diversity – diversity of languages, of cultures, of thoughts of beliefs. This is destruction not only of people, but of a symbol of friendship."

Yet it is this large foreign client base that seems to have made the German Bakery a target, similar to the Mumbai attacks on November 26, where the terrorists chose the famous Café Leopold and luxury hotels frequented by foreigners.

Soft target

Prior to the attacks, security had been tightened around the Osho Ashram and the Jewish Chabad House, based on intelligence inputs of a possible terror strike. These were the two locations surveyed as potential targets by David Coleman Headley, an operative of the Pakistan-based terror group Lashkar-e-Toiba. But the German Bakery had been considered a soft target, says Union Minister P Chidambaram, denying that there had been an intelligence failure.

While the government has not ruled out Pakistani involvement, the leading Congress party has so far rejected any demands by right-wing opposition groups to put off the resumption of high-level talks with Pakistan planned for next week.

Author: Pia Chandavarkar (Pune)
Editor: Thomas Baerthlein