MUMBAI: Six persons, including an employee of Khamaria ordnance factory, died in a blast at the demolition ground of the Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) at Pulgaon in Wardha district of Maharashtra on Tuesday. As many as 10 others were injured in the blast.
The condition of four of those injured is serious, officials said. The incident took place at around 7 am at the field range of Asia’s biggest ammunition depot when ammunition was being delivered from an Ordnance Factory in Khamaria near Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh for controlled destruction.
The incident took place while ammunition for 23 mm guns was being unloaded at the site. The deceased have been identified as Rajkumar Bhowte (23), Prabhakar Ramdas Wankhede (46), Pravin Prakash Munjewar (25), Vilas Lakshmanrao Pachare (40), Narayan Pachare (55), and Udayveer Singh (37), a staffer of the Khamaria Ordnance Factory near Jabalpur, a defence ministry spokesperson said.
Military experts have reached the spot and thorough investigation is being carried out into the explosion, the spokesperson said. Unserviceable ordnance is destroyed by carrying out controlled explosions in pits at the field ranges near the Pulgaon depot.
The work is carried out through authorised contractors. The work is supposed to be carried out by skilled labourers. However, the contractors might have recruited inexperienced labourers, locals said.
Local sources also said that accidents keep happening at the ammunition destruction site due to the rush to collect metallic parts of the ammunition. In a similar incident in 2016, 19 people were killed in an explosion, followed by massive fire, at the CAD. However, a senior retired army official, who didn’t want to be named, said the 2016 explosion apparently took place due to a rise in temperature at the bunkers, while the explosion on Tuesday was an accident.