The Raghunathpali police on Wednesday arrested Rajesh Tigga of Tarkera in the Balighat area on the outskirts of the city and seized a cache of gelatin and detonator from his possession. On a tipoff, the police conducted raid on Tigga’s house and seized 51 pieces of gelatins and detonators. Sources said that he was involved in this illegal business and has been supplying the explosives to the quarry owners. Tigga’s arrest once again established the rampant illegal explosive trading in steel city.
Notably, on February 2 forenoon, two persons Ghamanlal Agarwal and Premsagar Sahoo were killed in the explosion due to short circuit in the godwon of the former. During investigation, a police team led by Rourkela SP Anirudha Singh found 570 gelatins and 375 detonators from the godown. Earlier, the Brahmani Taranga police had arrested Agarwal and another person, Ratha Kisan, in January 2013 and seized 61 bags of ammonia nitrate, weighing 50 kg each, and 3,300 pieces of detonators from their possession. Both of them had confessed to their involvement in trading of explosives.
In another incident, the Jharkhand police had seized 8,000 detonators in two packets from a Rourkela-Jharkhand bus in February first week. The police had arrested the driver and conductor and court-forwarded the helper. During interrogation, the helper informed that two youths had given him two packets with some money and told him to unload them at lohardega. Now with the arrest of Tigga it indicated that some more people are involved in illegal explosive trading having their centre in Rourkela.