GURUGRAM: Investigators scanning the vicinity of a CNG station, the scene of a macabre triple murder a day earlier, stumbled on a cache of explosives hidden in a vacant house in the same neighbourhood on Tuesday.
Stashed in a toilet of the Sector 31 house, that sits behind a tall gate and perimeter wall like most bungalows, were two hand grenades, 15 practice grenades, 43 empty cartridges and an eight-feet-long bicat strip. The ownership of the house was traced to a chartered accountant in Delhi. Police said he was being questioned.
The house is behind the CNG station, separated by a small park and a boundary wall. Police said they had so far found nothing to suggest a connection between the explosives in the house and the triple murders.
Police said they launched a search operation in the area around 8am after a "tip-off" about the likely presence of arms and ammunition in the house. They first secured a search warrant, then cordoned off the area and asked residents of nearby houses to vacate with the help of the local RWA.
The bomb squad and a dog squad team were called to the house. "Along with the bomb disposal squad, several police teams were pressed into action," said DCP (east) Virender Vij. It took more than two hours for the police to defuse the explosives that were found in the toilet seat of the bathroom. All the explosives were placed in a six-foot trench dug on the compound of the house where two controlled detonations were carried out to diffuse the grenades and the bicat strip separately, police said.
"There were two polythene bags - one containing the two hand grenades and 15 MK 90 practice grenades and another one with the bicat strip. We successfully diffused the grenades, the practice grenades and the bicat strip. We have also detained the house owner from Delhi. He has been brought to Gurugram," said ACP Aman Yadav.
Prima facie, police said, it appeared no one had visited the house for the past three years. The chartered accountant bought the house 15 years ago, a police officer said. An FIR has been registered at Sector 40 police station under sections 4 and 5 of the Explosive Substance Act, 1908.
"The ordinance department has also been involved. They are looking into the chain of events. No one had come to check the house in the past three years," said ACP Yadav.
This is the first large haul of explosives in the city in recent memory. "Way back in 2005, some hand grenades were recovered from a flat along Golf Course Road, where some criminals had been hiding," an official said.
Police have, meanwhile, formed several teams to track down the killers of the three CNG station pump staffers who were hacked to death in the early hours of Monday, but did not pick up any significant leads on Tuesday. The three employees - manager Pushpendra, pump operator Bhupendra and filler Naresh Kumar - were on night duty at the station on the service road of the Delhi-Jaipur carriageway when they were stabbed with sharp-edged weapons that left all three with heavy gashes on their bodies. All three bled to death.
