Ghaziabad, May 8
A tragedy was averted when 61 missiles were found in Shankar Steel Factory on the Bulandshahar road in the Kavi Nagar Industrial area of Ghaziabad today.
The missiles had been concealed as part of the steel scrap in a water tank in the compound of the factory which was later to be smelted for making steel. A strong posse of policemen and SOG personnel had raided the factory on the tipoff of an informer that some live rockets were concealed on the factory premises.
One of three owners of the factory, Vivek Luthra, has been arrested while the other two partners, Mukesh Gupta and Ravi Wadhawan, have absconded. These three had purchased the factory from Sukhdev Singh Batra of Chandigarh a few years ago, the police said. SSP Piyush Mordia and SP City rushed to the site. Bomb disposal experts have also been summoned who are trying to defuse the live missiles.
Twelve workers had died at Bhushan Steel Factory in Sahibabad , Ghaziabad, over two years ago when similar live rockets, missiles and bombs imported as part of steel scrap had exploded. Even after that, rockets, bombs and missiles had continued to be found in different places in the western UP, some times on roadside where they had been dumped by panicky truckers and steel factory owners. A few rockets had then reportedly been found in Ludhiana and Mandi Gobindgarh in Punjab also
Luckily, in today’s incident there was no casualty, the police said. Investigations are going on and the police is trying to find out how the steel factories are able to import scrap containing live
rockets.
