By IANS
Lucknow : Is Uttar Pradesh sitting on a powder keg? The question has begun doing the rounds since the state police made a major haul of explosives close on the heel of two other similar incidents this week.
Police Thursday night discovered the pack of explosives from a village in Allahabad district bordering Madhya Pradesh. On Tuesday, serial blasts in Gorakhpur left six injured and explosives were found from the Faizabad railway station.
"Some 50 kg of lethal ammonium nitrate and 1,000 metres of magnetic fuse wire was recovered from a jeep abandoned by some people who managed to give the cops a slip and flee into Madhya Pradesh," state principal home secretary K. Chandramauli told IANS here Friday.
"The explosives were seized in Shankergarh area during the checking of vehicles at the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border."
Even as Allahabad Police maintained that these explosives were also used widely for mining and quarrying purposes in the rocky Shankargarh area, they did not rule out the possibility of these being brought for unlawful purposes.
"We cannot take any chances, particularly in the light of Tuesday's triple blast in Gorakhpur as well as the haul of explosives from an airbag at Faizabad railway station," Chandramauli said.
"We also cannot ignore the fact that this region of Allahabad lies close to the Maoist infested belt, so the explosives could have been heading there."
According to Allahabad Police, a special team has been rushed to Madhya Pradesh on the trail of the occupants of the jeep, including its driver.
Hours after the blasts rocked the communally sensitive Gorakhpur town, Uttar Pradesh cops recovered about 10 kg of explosives and 20 litres of ammonium nitrate from the circulating area in front of reservation counters at the Faizabad railway station.
Unconfirmed reports also talked about the recovery of a "powerful bomb" from the Farukhabad railway station on Wednesday night.