A Bomb Disposal Squad officer died on Monday when a crude bomb he was trying to defuse exploded. The victim and two others were defusing a pile of 1,100 bombs seized from Bolpur’s strife-stricken Nanoor a day before. Preliminary probe and eye-witness reports suggest that the officer had deviated from operating procedures and tried to tear open the bomb casing and burn the gunpowder inside. The three officers were not attired in the now-mandatory “bomb suits” which could have withstood the impact of the explosion.
Union minister Mukul Roy reached the spot and met the victims at Burdwan Medical College hospital. “The chief minister expressed her grief on the incident. A Rs 10-lakh compensation will also be provided to the next of kin. The funeral will be held in Lalbagh with due honour,” Roy told TOI.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee also expressed her concern over piling up of bombs in an area where police are conducting combing operations intermittently. It was here on July 27, 2000, 11 Trinamool Congress supporters were brutally murdered. A court last year, convicted 44 CPM supporters and leaders to life imprisonment for their role in it. The simmering tension in the once CPM stronghold, however, still refuses to ebb. Roy alleged, “These are still being fomented by CPM.”
According to eye-witnesses and police sources, Naunehar Mirza - a Birbhum police sub-inspector - was among the team disposing crude bombs in Nanoor’s Suchpur. The bombs seized on Sunday were buried underground in three plastic containers. Mirza and two other policemen were injured when the bombs suddenly went off . They were first taken to a local hospital and later referred to Burdwan Medical College. But Mirza died on the way.
“Prima facie, the accident took place when they were unearthing the bombs. The bomb exploded suddenly. The victim was immediately rushed to Burdwan,” Birbhum SP Nishat Parvez said. Bolpur SDPO Debasmita Das, who also reached the spot immediately, said, “The sub-inspector was an officer of the bomb squad. They were disposing the bombs which were recovered yesterday.”
Mirza, who was originally attached to District Intelligence Branch, went to Suchpur from Suri on Monday morning along with two constables of the Bomb Disposal Squad. Other policemen joined them from Nanoor police station. According to sources, Mirza didn’t have such training but he reportedly had enough experience. He had been with police for the last a decade-and-a-half and spent most of his tenure in Birbhum.
According to locals, the team had already disposed of most of the bombs stockpiled there. But unable to stand the noise, they then tried to defuse the bombs by cutting the wire and throw the explosives into fire. They perhaps reasoned this will cut down the noise. Mirza himself was cutting the wire of the bombs, locals claimed.
In September 2006, two officers from CID’s Bomb Disposal Squad were also killed when an IED they were trying to defuse exploded. The officers, television footage later revealed, were actually hammering the IED to open its metal casing.
