Explosives found at Palghar are RDX: Forensic report

A team of crime branch officials searched the village last month and recovered 12kg of RDX neatly packed and dumped there

According to the Kalina forensic science laboratory’s report — submitted to the Mumbai crime branch on Saturday — the explosives found last month at Varai-Sativli village on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad national highway in Palghar, are research department explosives (RDX).

Police searching the spot where the RDX was discovered last month. (HT File Photo)

A senior crime branch officer confirmed the development.

The Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS), which later joined the investigation, was informed about the report. Mumbai police sources said a team of crime branch officials — acting on specific intelligence input — had searched the village and recovered 12kg of RDX neatly packed and dumped.

The crime branch had also recovered a few old clothes, boots, utensils, wooden stilts and other material from the spot. They have not ruled out the possibility of people having stayed in the area. The development has seen both the crime branch and the ATS step up its search for the people who created the ammunition dump in Palghar.

Investigators are also looking for potential connections to the Pakistani spy Nandlal Meghwal. Meghwal confessed to having smuggled about 35kg of RDX to India after being arrested in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan in August.

RDX, which has been smuggled in to Mumbai since 1993, has been a source of concern considering that the explosive was used in the 1993 serial blasts, the 2003 twin blasts and in the 2006 train blasts. Jalalludin Mullah, a top HuJI-B operative, told investigators that he had delivered 20kg of RDX to a man named Shabaz alias Ravi in Mumbai when he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh special task force in 2007.