A cop at Basanti Sweets during an inspection on Wednesday. Sanat Kumar Sinha

The blast at Kazipara, Dum Dum, has robbed the locality of one of its morning habits — a visit to Basanti Sweets beside which the explosion occurred on Tuesday.

The shop downed its shutters immediately after the blast.

On Wednesday, the owner’s son said the family was not sure when they could resume business.

Police have cordoned off the area around a row of shops on the ground floor of the four-storey building that houses Basanti Sweets.

It is a double blow for Nityananda Ghosh, the shop’s owner, before Puja as he had planned to relocate to its original position.

Strategically located at Kazipara crossing in Nagerbazar, the shop on the ground floor of the blast-hit building was Ghosh’s first attempt to branch out from the original location opposite Motijheel College in Dum Dum.

That was in 2008. The shop was opposite the present address on Kazipara Road till 2015 when it shifted to make way for a five-storey building.

The shop now stands over 300sq ft while the godown adjoining it, in front of which the blast occurred, measures around 1,000sq ft.

Ghosh had planned to shift to the original location on Panchami.

“That probably won’t happen now,” Ghosh said on the phone from Punjab.

He said he had left Calcutta on September 24 and that he would return on Friday.

Also, there is no hope for high sales during the festive season, a family member said.

“We don’t know what to do,” Ghosh’s son Raja said. “Biltu’s (Bibhas Ghosh) death in front of the shop in the blast is a huge blow. Everything is uncertain now. We don’t know when we can open the shop.”

For almost a decade the Kazipara shop has managed to attract a set of loyal customers who would vouch for its sweets that arrived in vans from the main shop every day. Sweets would fly off the shelves till 11 at night.

“On any holiday the sweet shop would attract a considerable crowd,” Souvik Modak, owner of a flat on the first floor of the four-storey building, said.

“Sita di (Bibhas’s mother) would often visit the shop with Biltu (Bibhas) to buy sweets,” Modak said. “On Tuesday, she stood outside the shop when the bomb exploded.”

Bibhas’s father Janmejoy joined Basanti Sweets in 2000, a year after Ghosh opened his first shop in Dum Dum.

Over the next few years, Ghosh and his three brothers ensured the sweet they prepared remained a cut above others.

A shed with more than 70 cows was set up in Madhyamgram and cottage cheese prepared from the milk was used to make the sweets.

Confectioners were brought in from Purulia, Bankura, North and South 24-Parganas and they worked in shifts.

“The average daily sale at the Kazipara shop was around Rs 35,000 till the blast on Tuesday. The figure is double for the Motijheel shop,” Ghosh said.