bengaluru the chikkaballapur district sessions court on tuesday denied bail to 12 people arrested in connection with a quarry blast in which six men had died on february 23 at hirenagavalli villagethe victims were suspected to be ferrying explosives from a quarry and crusher unit fearing police raids and were stashing them away when the blast took placethe suspects are gs nagaraj 55 of chikkathamanahalli shiva reddy alias p venkatashiva 52 of gorantla mohammed riyaz ansari 35 from jharkhand and resident of gudibanda raghavendra reddy 43 of hirenagavalli manjunatha reddy 44 of jhebbal kempapura praveen 22 anand n 46 and madhusudhana reddy 48 residents of hirenagavalli ganesh 41 of dharmapuri dv ravindra 67 of tumakuru murthy m 36 of dharmapuri taluk m sambhashiva reddy 52 of jp nagarthe accused had sought regular bail contending that they have been unnecessarily shown as accused in the crimethere are more than 35 crusher units but police made allegations against the accused only under political influence police searched the crusher unit on february 22 and seized a compressor but not any explosive they have already recorded the statements of witnesses and the accused the custodial enquiry is not required the petitioners arguedhowever the prosecution said the manager of the unit instructed the labourers to destroy explosives and they were quarrying illegally as mining operations in the district are prohibited by the governmentno grounds to entertain pleas judgethe petitioners are involved in jsimilar crimes as well as illegal use of explosives i do not find any grounds to entertain the petitions as the investigation is still in progress bhairappa shivaling naik principal district and sessions judge chikkaballapur observedthe employees of sri sai shiradi aggregate quarry engineer uma mahesh computer operator gangadhar weigher murali security guards ramu mahaboob singh bora and accountant abhi naik died in the blast