NEW DELHI
The mushrooming of bomb-making factories across West Bengal districts and regular blasts in these “so called illegal firecracker units” due to “unsafe handling by unskilled workers”, the official line used by the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government, proves it has failed to wake up as for months after months since her government came to power, there have been a steady rise in such incidents, ending scores of lives.
Villagers, who are involved, have long tried to hide the “blood-thirsty enterprise” owing to a lack of regular livelihood under government schemes that have pushed them to this “ghar-ghar opportunity of an arrangement for regular earning” with all materials being provided at doorstep and right under the nose of Trinamool Congress Panchayat leaders, who are either hand in glove or have turned a blind eye to the crime.
Such is the reality of the areas where blasts have ripped through lives and properties in the past four months that at least 500 houses around the recent blast site are said to be storage units for thousands of kilos of explosives and raw materials for these bombs. Just ahead of the recently concluded Panchayat polls, similar blasts had ripped through houses and bagful of bombs were also recovered from open fields where they were abandoned or in ponds and nallahs as those involved feared being caught.
In just over three months after a blast in Purba Medinipur that killed nine people, the state was shaken by a similar explosion in North 24 Parganas “factory” at Mochpal Paschimpara village in Duttapukur area on 27 August, claiming the lives of at least nine people.
Sources close to the probe team told The Sunday Guardian that the entire area has turned into a deathbed. Apart from the incident site that one could easily mistake for being hit by a 5-magnitude earthquake, the situation is more or less similar in neighbouring villages. After locals witnessed the scattered body parts and huge loss of property, they started opening up about their grievance and anger. They said that around 500 houses in the area are actually warehouses—shuttered and used as gunpowder godowns. “We risked calling the STF teams to check a number of houses that we know for sure still have ‘masala’ hid inside,” said Barin Mondal.
Bengal BJP MLA Ashok Kumar Lahiri said: “The kind of devastation at the site is similar to a mine blast in a war zone which can never be compared to a baji (firecracker) explosion.” With explosives stocked in the next room, the households in the Duttapukur area had been running smoothly until it all blew up. Locals said, “You would get kilos of explosives in these houses at any time of the day” and raised serious questions about law and order in the state, some even raising questions on the police as things have been out in the open for years now, they said, reminding about pre-panchayat poll blasts and others before that.
Manik Modal of Paschimpara said: “Our claim is not false”, and the police’s investigation found evidence for the same. Since the 27 August blast, the police have recovered a total of 30,000 kg of explosive materials from different places of Duttapukur and Barasat areas.
The Special Task Force has so far seized illegal explosives worth about Rs1.5 crore from nearby Amdanga, Sagirhat, Kathuria, and Berunanpukuria areas. Residents of all these areas, including Narayanpur where the “bomb-making business” has been in boom giving it the moniker “Bajigram”, want an end to this “bajir bajey business” (bad business). “When will anybody really come up and actually clean the area?” said Deepak Joardar. “There is nothing new in the Sunday blast, if you see, it’s a repeat telecast, again another 9 lives lost, but who cares? Police have been told about these, they know about it, but they are never to be found manning the right areas.” These illegal factories lure the daily wage worker with Rs 400 which is more lucrative than the government’s scheme, he added.
“There is a stock of contraband in every house. Some are keeping them in their own house, some are renting their houses to others. We want this illegal business to stop,” said Shamima Begum. As per requirements, the “traders” deliver raw material to the workers’ homes. Most of the population in these areas have fallen easy prey to the Rs 400 hard cash.
Moutushi Ghatak, a housewife from a well-to-do family in the neighbourhood, said, “Many women of the village are involved in this business. Rs 110 is paid for packing 1,000 stakes. Two thousand packings can be done a day. Both the locals and police agree that at least ten times the amount of gunpowder recovered is still there yet to be recovered and it is a ticking bomb.
Before the Duttapukur blast barely 30 km from Kolkata, there was a similar blast in May in South 24 Parganas, when three women of the same family, including a minor, were killed and several persons were injured in Budge Budge, about 26 km from the city, as per the police.
Then there was the East Midnapore blast in May as well, along the Bengal-Odisha border in Egra when nine people were killed. In December 2021, in South 24 Parganas, three people were killed and several others injured in an explosion at an illegal firecracker manufacturing unit in Nodakhali. In May 2015, in West Midnapore, 12 people were charred to death and four others injured in an explosion in an illegal firecracker factory in Pingla.