Bengal blast: Questions raised over excluding sections under Explosives Act in FIR

Kolkata, May 17 While the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of West Bengal Police has launched its probe into the blast at an illegal fire-cracker factory at Egra in East Midnapore district that claimed nine lives on Tuesday by registering an FIR, questions are being raised as to why relevant sections under the Explosives Act have not been included in the First Information Report.

It is learnt that the FIR includes Sections 188 (illegal activities), 286 (negligent conduct with explosive substance) and 304 (causing death by negligence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), along with Sections 24 (penalty for letting off rockets), and 26 (penalty for not taking out a licence for a warehouse or workshop) of the West Bengal Fire Services Act.

However, despite the loss of nine lives, not a single section under the Explosives Act has been included in the FIR. Now questions are being raised whether sections under the Explosives Act were deliberately excluded with the alleged intention to tone down the seriousness of the matter.

Kaushik Gupta, senior counsel at the Calcutta High Court, told that prima facie it looks quite strange that sections under the Explosives Act were not included in the FIR, which is generally done in case of explosions of such nature.

"However, excluding sections under the Explosives Act does not mean that the same cannot be added in the future. The probe agency can include the relevant sections at a later stage," Gupta said.

The opposition parties are claiming that the police authorities are deliberately trying to underplay the incident to guard the ruling party leaders, who are allegedly involved in this tragedy.

According to state BJP spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya, whenever such tragedies happen, the first move of the state administration is to downplay the incident and the second is to underplay the process of investigation.

"The same thing is happening now and that is why we are demanding a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe into the matter," he said.