Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Grenade: former policeman held

Staff Reporter

Thiruvananthapuram: The Rural police have arrested a 32-year-old former policeman in connection with the discovery of a defunct grenade in a culvert at Kappamvila in Kallambalam police station limits on August 28. The police identified the accused as Subash Nair, a local resident.

Deputy Superintendent of Police B. Sasidharan said Subash had come into possession of the grenade in 1994 while working as a driver of the police department in the Andaman and Nicobar islands. Subash had accidentally found the grenade in a dump yard of the Navy in Port Blair. He was discharged from service on the charge of insubordination the same year. The grenade was manufactured in a Government-owned ammunitions factory in Maharashtra. The police said Subash was familiar with hand-bombs and firearms.

The finding of the grenade had caused much communal tension at Kallambalam. It was alleged that a "religious fundamentalist organisation" was using such bombs to train its cadres. The discovery was also "wrongly" linked to the murder of a Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) functionary in Kilimanoor, the police said. Some persons in Kallambalam had been investigated in connection with the murder.

The first clue in the case came when the police learned that Subash had been admitted with burns to a private hospital on August 29. Initially, Subash told investigators that the burns were caused when a tin of used engine oil accidentally exploded while he was setting fire to a garbage heap in the compound of his house.

A part of his face, chest and crown of the head had been scalded in the explosion. Forensic doctors who examined Subash told the police that the burns could not have been caused by petroleum based lubricants. P.D. Somarajan, Assistant Director (Explosives), Forensic Sciences Laboratory (FSL), who inspected the site of the explosion, retrieved two broken pieces of metal. It was later found that the pieces were the remains of the grenade's missing detonator. The police questioned Subash's house maid Rebecca, 67, who told the investigators that something had "exploded with a loud bang and flash" when Subash set fire to the garbage heap.

Mr. Sasidharan said Subash confessed to having possessed the grenade when confronted with the evidence. The accused was close to some of the persons who had emerged as suspects in the murder of the RSS functionary. He panicked when the police searched their houses and decided it was better to dispose the grenade after removing the detonator. Fearing that the police would inspect his house following the discovery of the grenade, Subash decided to destroy the detonator by burning it along with garbage.

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