Bomb defuse fiasco hits cop.... CID constable suffered burn injuries

Smoke covers the blast site as the constable tries to save himself. Picture by Main Uddin Chisti

TT, Cooch Behar: A CID constable was injured when a bomb squad of the state intelligence agency was defusing some crude bombs, allegedly without proper precautions and safety suits.

Debasish Mitra suffered burn injuries on his face and is under treatment at the sub-divisional hospital in Dinhata.

The incident has raised questions about why the task of defusing the bombs, seized during a recent raid at a village near the Bangladesh border, was taken up without proper precautions.

Sources said a few days back, police and BSF personnel conducted a joint raid in Bhoram-Payasthi village under Dinhata-I block. Five crude bombs were seized from an under-construction toilet in the hamlet. One person was arrested. The seized bombs were brought and kept at Dinhata police station. On Wednesday, a three-member team from CID's bomb squad arrived at Dinhata to defuse the bombs.

They took the bombs to Krishimela Ground, located about a kilometre away from the police station. As the news spread, many people assembled at the site the watch the procedure.

"The team members opened the outer cover of all five bombs one after another. As they assembled the covers, which were smeared in gunpowder and tried to burn them, the explosion occurred. One of the constables got injured as the burning explosive scalded his face," said a police source.

Locals present at the site said the team was working without any precaution. "None of them were in the safety suits, which include helmets and defusing the bombs," said one of them.

Mitra was provided treatment at the hospital. Later, Kuntal Banerjee, the sub-divisional police officer of Dinhata, visited him and spoke to doctors. Such defusing of bombs by CID personnel without precaution had led to deaths earlier. In August 2013, a constable died while trying to defuse a bomb in Alipurduar. In May 2016, two CID officials died while performing a similar task at Baishnabnagar in Malda.