Kasaragod police seized a cache of explosives allegedly from a house & car in Muliyar gram panchayat in the early hours of Tuesday. The Kasaragod police arrested Mustafa under the Explosive Substances Act, a resident of Kolichiyadukkam.
The explosive cache was discovered by the Excise Department, which raided his house as part of a crackdown on bootlegging and arrack.
Excise officials knocked on his door around 12.30 am on Tuesday. “They saw an SUV parked on the compound with several cartons in the boot”. On checking the boxes, they found the explosives and called in Adhur police.
Excise officers found around 2,800 gelatin sticks in 13 boxes, one dynamite, nearly 7,000 detonators, and five rounds of wires. Some of them were recovered from his house, too.
When police were busy with the procedure, Mustafa slashed his wrist. He was taken to a private hospital in Kasaragod.
Mustafa told officers that he used to run granite quarries in Karnataka and now he supplied explosives to quarries there. To be sure, gelatin sticks are cheap explosives used by quarries. They are triggered by a detonator. However, the police are still to verify his claim.
“We will have to verify his claim. In any case, it is illegal to store explosives in cars and houses. We will have to find the source of the explosives,” police said. Explosives can be stored only in designated magazines of the quarries.
