NAGPUR, April 12: The city police stumbled upon a cache of over 1,900 commercial detonators of non-electrical type, following a mysterious explosion in the shop of a scrap dealer on Kailash Talkies Road in Pachpaoli area here on Saturday noon. No one was reported injured in the incident.Pandemonium prevailed in the area for a considerable time as a crowd of curious onlookers gathered in front of the shop -- Kamal Metals -- following the blast. The police and the bomb squad personnel rushed to the site on being alerted by an unknown caller.
The explosion, described as a "minor one" by the police, damaged a few glass panes and furniture inside the shop. However, there were little clues about what precisely caused the blast considering that the none of the 1,941 detonators seized from the site was "live", police said.
The shop-owner, Kamalkishore Naththulal Kasekar (36) of Satnami Nagar, has been taken into custody under the relevant provisions of the Explosives Substances Act.
Police said the shop,situated near first railway crossing on Kailash Talkies Road, had remained closed for almost a month owing to lack of business. Kasekar decided to open it on Saturday and clean the premises on account of Hanuman Jayanti.
It was when the cleaning operation was on around noon that the blast occurred, police said. No one could understand what went wrong and by the time people from the vicinity realised the cause, someone had alerted the police. Immediately, the staff from the nearby Pachpaoli police station and the bomb disposal unit, led by inspector S G Ingle, reached the spot. In the ensuing search, the police came across the detonators kept in a gunnysack.
Preliminary inspection by the bomb squad personnel revealed that none of the commercial detonators, normally used for digging wells, were live. Police suspect that the explosion might have been caused by an odd live detonator while the things inside were being moved to clean the premises. However, they have no certain theory to establish thecause.
Speaking to the The Indian Express a police official said the detonators normally perform the task of stimulating an explosion and they are useless unless coupled with an explosive substance. Some detonators also explode when banged against hard surface.Interrogations revealed that Kasekar had purchased the detonators in scrap nearly a month ago from an unidentified seller. Since then, they have been lying inside the shop.
The Pachpaoli police are investigating the case.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
