ROURKELA: The loot of the explosives-laden truck by the Maoist operatives has opened a Pandora’s Box with violation of safety and security protocols on storage and transportation of explosives coming out in open in Sundargarh.
Four days after the loot, two more trucks laden with illegal explosives were seized from Rourkela. All three trucks carrying unaccounted industrial explosives had started from Bargaon-based warehouses owned by Shraban Agarwal who was arrested with his truck driver Birsa Samad on June 3 (Thursday).
Rourkela police on Thursday took Agarwal on two day remand. The 41-year-old businessman has one explosive licence in his name and another in his spouse’s name. Police also questioned his wife on the day.
While police have, so far, ruled out Agarwal’s direct link to outlawed CPI (Maoist) outfit, it is probing the supply of his unaccounted amount of bulk explosives. It is also taking help of the State GST directorate to find out the details of explosives procured and supplied by Agarwal. An officer involved in the investigation said Agarwal had mentioned about supply of bulk quantities of explosives to one client of Balasore district and a second one but both have apparently denied.
Alarmed by the developments, Western Range of Odisha Police has launched a massive exercise to conduct security audit of all explosive storage centres and magazines in the jurisdiction of the Rourkela, Sundargarh and Keonjhar police districts.
DIG (Western Range) Brijesh Kumar Rai said after finding of violation of Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) guidelines, security audit of all explosives magazines is underway. Rourkela has 21 such magazines, Sundargarh has 11 and Keonjhar has 32 magazines and audit across their 24 locations has begun.
One year data regarding procurement and disbursement of explosives by the licence holders is being analysed along with the physical stock. It is a voluminous exercise and would take time, he said adding reports would be submitted to the respective district explosive controllers for appropriate action.
Had the loot incident not occurred, the illegal storage and supply of explosives would not have possibly come to fore.
Sources privy with the situation said explosive storage centres of Sundargarh and Keonjhar barely follow rules and regulations of PESO. Strict adherence to PESO guidelines is necessary since these two mining districts handle bulk industrial explosives and share vast porous forest borders with the Maoist den of Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.