A pall of gloom descended on the otherwise busy Dilsukhnagar Road while heart rending scenes were witnessed at hospitals.
There was palpable tension in Dilsukhnagar where VIPs made a beeline while thousands gathered out of curiosity.
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, who flew to Hyderabad early Friday, said: “There was no specific information that it (blasts) will happen in a particular area.
“A general alert has been sounded for the last two-three days. We have issued this alert in the entire country,” he said.
Shinde later Friday faced the ire of the opposition in parliament, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accusing him of taking a casual attitude vis-a-vis the terror attack.
Besides Shinde and Azad, union ministers S. Jaipal Reddy, K. Chiranjeevi and Sarve Satyanarayana, BJP president Rajnath Singh, former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen leader Asaduddin Owaisi visited the blast site and hospitals.