RAMANATHAPURAM
The office of the Joint Chief Controller (JCC) of Explosives, Chennai, the officials from which inspected the TNT slabs, the high-power explosives, recovered from the backyard of a house at Anthoniyarpuram in Thangachimadam on the night of June 25, has said the explosives could be transported to a nearby explosives magazine (godown), pending final report.
After two Deputy Controllers of Explosives inspected the explosives twice – on July 3 and 6 – and collected samples, the office of the JCC of Explosives, in a letter to Tiruvadanai District Munsiff-cum-Judicial Magistrate P. Balamurugan, said it could give its final opinion on destroying the explosives only after receiving the results of the tests conducted on the samples at Forensic Sciences Laboratory, Chennai.
Pending the final report, the explosives could be shifted to the nearest explosives magazine, considering the safety of the local people, the office said. The letter was handed over to Magistrate Balamurugan, holding additional charge of Rameswaram JM Court, the jurisdictional court, on Thursday, police sources said.
The JM, who was visiting the Rameswaram court twice a week, would hold his sitting in the court on Friday and likely to pass an order for the shifting of the explosives. As the nearest explosives magazine was located in Sivaganga, they would be shifted there, the sources said.
Superintendent of Police Omprakash Meena said the TNT slabs would be transported in a specially designed explosive vehicle available in Sivakasi. They had to be packed by experts for transportation, he added.
Soon after the recovery of the explosives, apparently buried by Sri Lankan Tamil militants, who had their camps in the area in the 1980s, the district police approached the court seeking permission to destroy them near the site itself.
The JM court, however, wanted the office of the JCC of Explosives to inspect the TNT slabs. The recovered explosives included 199 TNT slabs, two types of safety fuse wires, 11 packets of gunpowder-like explosive substance, two landmines and 87 signal rounds, the police said.
