The Centre on Saturday said that the blast that occurred inside the Nowgam police station in Jammu and Kashmir late on Friday night was triggered during a forensic sampling procedure. At least nine people were killed in the incident, with the toll likely to rise.
“For the last two days, a forensic sampling procedure was going on as they had to submit all the samples late Friday night,” a source said about the explosion that rocked the police station, where explosives recovered from the Red Fort blast-linked terror module were stored in an open area.
“Yesterday, at around 11.20 pm, an unfortunate accidental explosion took place inside the Nowgam police station. During the investigation of a terror module, a huge cache of explosive substances and chemicals had been recovered and kept securely in an open area of the police station,” Prashant Lokhande, Joint Secretary (J&K Division), Ministry of Home Affairs, said.
“All the agencies involved in the investigation are working together in a coordinated and scientific way. As part of standard and prescribed procedure, the recovered chemical and explosives samples were being forwarded for further forensic and chemical examination. Due to the voluminous recovery, the process was continually attended for the last two days by following the standard operating procedure. However, during the process, an accidental explosion took place at around 11.20 pm,” he added.
“The cause of the accident is being investigated, and any other speculation is unnecessary. The government stands in solidarity with the families of the deceased in this hour of grief,” Lokhande further said.
A senior Jammu and Kashmir (J-K) police officer said that the explosion was “so powerful” that “its shockwave was felt as far as 30 km away”. “The Nowgam police station and several adjacent vehicles were engulfed in flames, and barracks housing police personnel were damaged, with several officers sustaining injuries,” the officer added.
The Nowgam police station is at the centre of the investigation that led to the unravelling of a Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) interstate terror module last week. The probe into posters related to JeM appearing in the area would lead the J-K Police hundreds of kilometres away from the Valley to Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, exposing the module.
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As part of the raids to bust the module, the J-K Police had recovered more than 350 kg of ammonium nitrate. This was part of the roughly 2,900 kg of suspected explosive material, which also included potash, phosphorus, reagents, flammable materials, electronic circuits, batteries, wires, remote controls, timers, and metal sheets.
