KOLKATA: Some 11,000 gelatin sticks, over 50,000 detonators and sacks full of ammonium nitrate were recovered from Bahadurpur village near Nalhati in Birbhum district of West Bengal on Tuesday morning.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the explosives were smuggled from neighbouring Jharkhand in two vehicles.
Owner of the house Anarul Sheikh has been arrested. Both the vehicles have been seized but the drivers are absconding.
A section of the investigators believe that the explosives might be smuggled for the illegal stone quarries throughout Birbhum district. However, they don’t rule out the terror angle also.
“Investigation during the Burdwan blast case revealed that Birbhum has a good presence of Jihadi terrorists and several Islamic terrorists were nabbed from the district in subsequent operations,” a top police official said.
Kolkata Special Task Force had recently busted a new module of the Jamatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) in Murshidabad district which had planted IED at Bodh Gaya during Dalai Lama’s visit to avenge the atrocities on Rohingyas.
“It is quite possible that any terror module might have amassed the raw materials for a massive terror plot in West Bengal or any other state which is we are trying to know from where were the materials sourced and are trying to nab the drivers of the vehicles,” an investigating officer said.