Two held for operating illegal fireworks factory in Ghaziabad, two on the run

The police said they are on the lookout for two more men who allegedly set up the factory in Ator and also carried out the supply of manufactured firecrackers to different people

The Ghaziabad police on Wednesday arrested two persons for allegedly manufacturing illegal firecrackers from a rented house in Ator locality under the jurisdiction of Nandgram police station.

The police identified the suspects as Dharmendra Kumar, 25, and Vikas Kumar, 20, and booked them under the provisions of the Explosives Act. (Representative Image)

The police identified the suspects as Dharmendra Kumar, 25, and Vikas Kumar, 20, and booked them under the provisions of the Explosives Act.

The police said they recovered huge cache of manufactured and semi-finished fireworks and other material from the two suspects. These include 3,000 manufactured firecrackers, about 35000 semi-finished firecracker bombs, about 7,000 covers of the cracker bombs, and 10 kilograms of gunpowder, among other material used for manufacturing fireworks.

The arrests come on the heels of a building collapse in Loni’s Roop Nagar on Saturday that was allegedly triggered by a LPG cylinder blast that ignited illegally manufactured and stored fireworks in the building. Three child labourers were killed, and four unskilled women labourers were injured in the collapse, according to police. Police arrested Mohammad Shariq, who allegedly ran the illegal fireworks factory from the building, and two days later, arrested Vikas Goel, a stockist from nearby Farrukhnagar, who allegedly supplied manufacturing material to Shariq.

“The two suspects were nabbed on Wednesday upon information and they told us that they started the manufacturing unit in view of the upcoming festival season. We conducted searches late Tuesday night and the two were nabbed. They said they learned the method of manufacturing illegal fireworks from Haryana,” said Ravi Kumar Singh, assistant commissioner of police (City 2).

The police said they are on the lookout for two more men who allegedly set up the factory in Ator and also carried out the supply of manufactured firecrackers to different people.

The police identified the two absconding suspects as Mohammad Ishtikhar and Jamshed Ali, who are residents of Farrukhnagar-Asalatpur.

“These two persons are suspected to have recently set up the factory in Ator and hired the two arrested suspects for manufacture illegal fireworks. The two absconding suspects are linked to Farrukhnagar-Asalatpur and suspected to have been in the business of manufacture of fireworks and later the setting up of a factory in nearby Ator. Our teams are trying to trace the two and they will soon be arrested,” the ACP said.

Farrukhnagar, which is just 5km from Roop Nagar where the building has collapsed on Saturday, was once home to approximately 200 different traditional and labour-intensive manufacturing units that sold conventional fireworks before the introduction of green crackers.

Their licences were not renewed by the district administration after the Supreme Court in October 2018 banned the use of polluting crackers and ordered that only “green firecrackers” with low emissions and sound levels be used in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).