Eight days after the terror attack inside the station, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the smell of rotting food caused police officials to undertake a thorough search of all the unclaimed bags left behind by commuters after the attack on the night of November 26.

“The stench of rotten food items coming from one of the bags was unbearable. So we decided to open all the bags and empty the tiffin boxes people may have packed,” said constable Gajanan Shedge, who along with a fellow constable first found the small backpack with a “suspicious” package. “The bag was quite heavy. On opening it, we found a locked tin box with an electrical circuit. We quickly informed our superiors and the bomb squad was summoned, who confirmed that it was an explosive,” Shedge said.

On Thursday, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch said each of the 10 terrorists who entered the city was carrying one such explosive device, all of them are now accounted for after the CST discovery.

The bags, over 400 of them, were lying in the room for eight days. On being asked why the baggage room had not been sanitised before people were allowed to come in to look for articles they left behind in the melee, Mumbai Railway Police Commissioner Ashok Kumar Sharma said: “All the bags were sniffed by the dog squad after the incident. At that time, the explosive was not detected.”

On Thursday, the room was still full of unclaimed bags, many perhaps belonging to those killed in the attack. The policemen had painstakingly removed perishable food items from some bags, though the room continued to smell of stale food. Relatives of the dead and injured came in a steady trickle to collect bags, with policemen assisting them.