Delhi sitting on a virtual time-bomb

New Delhi, Dec 11: Delhi is ticking and not in a good way. In a report that appeared in the

, Delhi is apparently sitting on a bomb that if left unattended could become catastrophic. Not a terrorist attack but something that could be a case of negligence of the highest order.

There are around 100 bombs that landed in India as scrap from Iraq way back in 2004. They were intended to be melted in various parts of North India. They went unnoticed at both the Mumbai port and the inland container depot (ICD) in Tughlakabad. The sand-bags that stores the bombs at ICD has been lying there for six years now and nobody except the Army knows how many among them are live bombs.

"Shockingly, these odd 100 explosives were detected neither at the Mumbai port or the Tughlakabad depot. Officials woke up to the problem when one of these bombs exploded in a furnace unit somewhere in Haryana. Customs officials then searched the consignment thoroughly and isolated the bombs to one corner of the 10,000 square metre warehouse. In 2005, sandbags were put up around the bombs and the area secured," said a senior railway official.

The Army has been cold in their approach and Alli Rani, Container Corporation of India (Concor) CPRO said, "The Army officials visited the spot in 2009 but could not decide which spot to choose to neutralise the bombs. We came close to deciding a spot at least thrice but it was scrapped at the last moment. The Commonwealth Games came and we decided to delay the operation due to security reasons."

A source revealed on the Army's stand and said, " They said they needed a sufficiently big open space to complete the job and since these explosives have to be carried over manually, they also demanded that they be insured. Initially, Customs and Concor had been at loggerheads over who would bear the costs but finally Concor decided to foot the bill".

The DCP (southeast) OP Mishra said that it was an old problem and efforts were on to find an area to dispose off the shells.

OneIndia News