Four years after a case of missing explosives hit national headlines amid worries that they could have reached anti-national elements, a court in Sagar district on Wednesday convicted four persons who had illegally purchased the explosives from Dholpur-based Rajasthan Explosives and Chemicals Company (RECL). An alert had been sounded in 2010 when it was noticed that more than 160 consignments of explosives that left from RECL never reached magazines (places where explosives are stored) in Sagar and Ashoknagar districts of Madhya Pradesh between April and June 2010. A chargesheet running into thousands of pages had been filed in November 2010 in a court in Sagar against 11 accused, including the owners of the magazines and four officials of the Rajasthan-based company. The accused had been booked under various sections of the IPC and The Explosive Substances Act. After a three-year trial, the court sentenced Devendra Thakur, Jaikishan Ashwani, Shivcharan Heda and his wife Deepa Heda to four years imprisonment and slapped a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on the four whom documents showed were the owners of the magazines. RECL officials were acquitted of the charges for lack of evidence. The police had a tough time investigating the case that saw diversion of explosives being sold to owners of magazines whose licenses had expired. The fake ownership of magazines and forged documents had exposed the slack monitoring by the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), formerly the Department of Explosives, the body tasked with issuing and inspection of magazines. Ashwani, one of the main accused who owned a magazine in Rajgarh town, had won an award instituted by the Madhya Pradesh government. Ashwani had won the award for being the second highest tax payer from the Rajgarh district in 2008-09. While Shivcharan Heda, 52, and his 39-year-old wife Deepa are residents of Bhilwara, Devendra Thakur, 33, and Jaikishan Ashwani,, 53, are residents of MP. The four have been convicted for forgery, conspiracy and under the Explosives Substances Act. The judgement was given by the First Additional Sessions Judge (Sagar). The FIR was registered in Baheriya Police Station, Sagar.
