Baru locals have ammunition dump in their backyard

"The dump has been targeted once and could be targeted again. The Army should remove it immediately since we constantly live under fear," says Manzoor Ali, a resident of the locality. The Baru locality mainly houses government officials. The dump is barely a kilometre from the houses of the Superintendent of Police (SP) and the District Collector (DC).

Sources in the district administration said that former DC Shaleen Kabra had approched the then Commander of the 121 Kargil Brigade about the danger to the lives of the residents of the locality from the dump.

The Army, however, maintains that there is "no danger" to the lives of the residents from the dump. They point out that the Army brass lives barely 200 meters from the dump. "It will not be economical to shift the dump since it is well constructed and spread across the hills. Though a lot of ammunition was destroyed, a fairly large quantity remained unaffected," says an official. And though the dump has not been shifted, no new ammunition is being brought here for storage.

"We have sighted and constructed a new dump not very far from here. It is close enough to replenish stocks in cases of emergency, and still far out of reach of Pakistan artillery," he adds. The Army categorically states that only the stocks that survived the shelling of May 9, 1999, and passed the usability test, are stocked in the hills.

After the conflict, the Army had conducted a court of inquiry into the explosion. "It now appears that the local commander was even asked to remove the dump to the reverse side of the hill and 3,000 tonnes of ammunition was actually removed. But the damage still happened," sources say.

The Army hopes that the civil administration will assure the locals that there will be no recurrence of the May 9, 1999, incident. But three burnt patches – ugly brown scars on the Baru hills – remind the people of Kargil the catastrophe that befell them last year.

Shell splinters as mementos

The scrap dealers are doing roaring business as they routinely do the rounds of various hotels in Kargil, selling the remnants of last year’s war as mementos to tourists. Splinters of various shapes and sizes – many of them from the shells fired by Pakistan and others from the ammunition dump – are being sold as scrap for Rs 12 per kg