How does a blast that has killed at least 89 people go from being an accidental gas cylinder blast to a conspiracy involving gelatin explosives in mainstream news? And what it was is still unclear.

Around 8.30 on Saturday morning, September 12, 2015, there was an explosion in the Madhya Pradesh town of Petlawad in Jhabua district.

Shortly after 9 am, sections of the media tweeted that there was an LPG cylinder blast in a house in Petlawad that left many people dead. Some tweets said it was a “detonator blast” in a hotel. (Predictably, the numbers of both the injured and the dead increased with time.)

Soon after, news channels also covered the story: Zee News reported that the cylinder blast in a restaurant near the bus stand in Petlawad had killed and injured 70 people. Other channels said more or less similar things.

But there was confusion over what exactly had happened. By the evening, news channels reported that it was in fact a short circuit at a shop in a residential-commercial area where gelatin sticks, an explosive used for mining, were stored, that led to the blast; that the short circuit and the explosion in the shop had led to the gas cylinder blast in the nearby restaurant. By now most reports pegged the number of deaths at around 85: the death toll was high because the restaurant near the site of the explosion and the bus stand nearby were both crowded.

On Saturday night, it was also revealed that the shop was owned by a certain Rajendra Kaswa, who was the “BJP Traders Cell Chief”. Unsurprisingly then, the Congress milked the incident. Ahead of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s visit to the site of the incident on Sunday morning, channels reported that Congress called for a bandh in Jhabua.

The Times of India reported on Sunday, September 13, that Kaswa had been smuggling explosives since the 1980s: he had “secured license from the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) notwithstanding the fact that he was under constant police surveillance for smuggling of explosives for the last three decades.” Meanwhile, the BJP state chief of Madhya Pradesh, Nandkumar Chouhan, responded to the Congress’ allegations saying Kaswa – who along with his extended family is missing since the time the blast occurred – “has nothing to do with either the BJP or the RSS.” After visiting Jhabua on Sunday, Shivraj Singh Chouhan also announced an “ex-gratia of Rs.5 lakh as well as a job for the next-of-kin of each of the dead”.

The chief minister also announced a bounty of Rs 1 lakh on key accused Kaswa. But while the police say Kaswa along with his family is on the run, there is a possibility that Kaswa might have died in the blast.

Call it the compulsions of breaking news, by Monday the blast had already become stale for the TV media. The police and the PESO in Jhabua have been blaming each other for the lapse in safety norms that led to the disaster. But many questions remain unanswered: Did Kaswa enjoy the patronage of a politician? Had he been nabbed earlier, could the ghastly incident have been avoided?

Surely this industrial disaster – for in the end it really was that – deserved further investigation and debates in the mainstream media on PESO and laws surrounding the regulations of explosives and industrial safety. Will it take another Bhopal-like industrial disaster to take notice?