Every time there is a terrorist or a Naxalite attack anywhere in the country, alarm bells ring in the fifth-floor office of the Chief Controller of Explosives in Nagpur’s lush Seminary Hill neighbourhood. For long, these bells have gone largely unheard but so loud is their ringing now that the entire security establishment is beginning to wake up: the colossal theft and diversion of explosives from the over 21000 licensed explosive manufacturers across the country.

Official records accessed by The Sunday Express show that in just two years, 2004-2006, for which data collection is complete, the scale of theft is staggering: 86,899 detonators, 20,150 kg of slurry explosives, 52,740 metres of detonating fuse and 419 kg of gelatin sticks. Not just this, huge quantities of explosive cartridges and boosters have been stolen from magazines (stores for explosives) and explosive vans.

Theft on such a scale, officials say, is an ominous foreshadow of what could lie ahead: for, not only is there no record of what has landed in whose hands, once a terror attack or a Naxalite strike takes place, even the trail of such material is virtually impossible to track.

Add to this the rising concern over ammonium nitrate, a chemical freely sold in the country but mixed with fuel oil and sulphur used for lethal strikes with devastating effect. Ammonium nitrate was mixed with RDX and used in the Varanasi blasts in March 2006 that killed over 20 people; it was also used in the Mumbai rush-hour train blasts last year; in Malegaon, too, ammonium nitrate was used in a cocktail of RDX and fuel oil. In the twin blasts in Hyderabad on August 25 this year, Neogel 90, an ammonium nitrate-based explosive, was mixed with steel pellets.

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