Explosive theft: Everyone admits problem, no work on solution

Official records obtained by The Indian Express show that advisory after advisory was issued by the Chief Controller of Explosives underlining how high the stakes were, many of these were even echoed at the highest level at the Centre.

In fact, North Block was aware of how serious the situation is as early as July 2006 with the then Cabinet Secretary B K Chaturvedi writing a confidential letter to the Union Home Secretary, informing him about intelligence inputs received from the Ministry of Defence. In it, instructions were issued to set up a high-level committee on diversion of licensed explosives that would even monitor manufacturing to prevent “misuse.”

The Cabinet Secretary’s note mentioned two alarming instances of explosive diversion: an Indian vessel apprehended by the Sri Lankan Navy was laden with 61,000 detonators that had markings of a Gulf Oil company but had originated from an explosive manufacturer in Hyderabad. The second instance involved theft of a huge quantity of commercial explosives off the Mumbai coast while being transported for a Border Roads Organization (BRO) project in Afghanistan.

The warning couldn’t have been more clear: “There has been a recurrence of incidents in which explosives are getting diverted from the manufacturing factories for unauthorised usage within India and getting lost en route, indicating that there is a review of the entire procedure of issue of licenses and also monitoring of firms dealing with explosives.”

Minutes of the ensuing meetings reveal that the Home Ministry first asked the MoD’s Ordnance Factory Board to provide the Chief Controller of Explosives with a flow-chart of methods of safety/transportation/inspection of explosive stores. However, once this was received, the Government rejected this as too cumbersome. It also asked the Intelligence Bureau to provide a blueprint for security mechanisms for checking antecedents of explosive manufacturers, transporters and end-users who were often blasters in mines and quarries.

Inundated by all this correspondence in Nagpur, Chief Controller of Explosives M Anbunathan sent a 14-point list of suggestions on augmenting systems and again outlined the absence of any response from state police and district authorities following pilferage or theft of explosives.

... contd.