Almost a week after four live hand grenades reportedly from Pakistan were found and later diffused in Ambala’s Shahzadpur, Haryana home minister Anil Vij on Monday chaired a coordination meeting of various high-level Central and state security agencies.
The meeting, convened at Police Officers Institute at Ambala Police Lines, was attended by officials from the National Investigating Agency (NIA), Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Indian Army, Indian Air Force, Haryana Police, Punjab Police, Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the district administration.
While no statement was issued by the police or Vij’s office, the minister told the media that at the meeting, several viewpoints were shared by officials concerned about measures to be taken for strengthening security in Ambala, as well as in the state.
“A report will be prepared on the information gathered and appropriate steps will be taken accordingly,” he added.
Vij, however, accepted that the recovery of explosives was discussed at the meeting as “what threats it can lead to and what steps can be taken”. He said, “The probe is at the initial stage, but we’ve discussed the preventive measures to be taken.”
On May 17, four live hand grenades with an “86P 01-03 632” marking were recovered almost 25 km away from the district headquarters.
{{/usCountry}}On May 17, four live hand grenades with an “86P 01-03 632” marking were recovered almost 25 km away from the district headquarters.
{{/usCountry}}A day later, apart from state teams, teams from the NIA and Intelligence Bureau (IB) visited the site. The NIA has started its own probe to correlate it with other such recoveries in the past, it has been learnt.
On March 20 last year, the police had seized three live hand grenades and an improvised explosive device (IED) in Sadopur village near Maharishi Markandeshwar University (MMU), adjacent to Chandigarh-Hisar national highway (NH-152).
It was later established that three of four men arrested with similar explosives in Karnal were allegedly working for their handler Harvinder Singh Sandhu, alias Rinda, a Pakistan-based gangster-terrorist, who tasked them to drop the explosives received through drones, in exchange for money.
In the past year or so, similar recoveries have been made in Kurukshetra, Karnal and Kaithal districts.