Jaipur:
If James Bond is available for hire - the recession has led to the indefinite postponement of his next on-screen adventure - he might want to consider a mission in Rajasthan.
Sixty one trucks loaded with explosives - gelatin sticks and detonators - worth Rs 1.5 crore have disappeared. Between April and June this year, the trucks pulled out of a government factory in Rajasthan's Dholpur district. From Rajasthan Explosives and Chemicals Limited, (RECL), they were headed to another factory - Ganesh Explosives - in Madhya Pradesh. On paper.
On the road, the 300 tonnes of explosives have disappeared without a trace. Not a sentence you want to hear outside of a James Bond movie.
The company that was meant to receive them had paid its bill in advance. It is co-owned by Devendra Singh Thakur and Jaikishen. In July this year, Devendra filed a complaint with the police, stating that while his factory's license had expired in March, Jaikishen was still ordering - and receiving - explosives from Rajasthan.
He is now missing. The police are working on tracking down the trucks based on their registration documents.
The Rajasthan factory says it was not aware that it was sending explosives to a factory which was no longer meant to be in business. "Whenever we sent explosives, we gave information to the police in Dholpur and in Sagar. Beyond that we don't have to do anything and we have not committed any fault," says YC Upadhyay of RECL.
Awanesh Mangalam, the Inspector General of Police in the region, offers this less-than-reassuring statement: "We are concerned about the party that is finally receiving these explosives. I hope the explosives are not being sold to those who would misuse it." Early police investigations suggest that the explosives were sold to private parties in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
What worries security officials is that in 2008, 18 live bombs found in Surat in Gujarat had detonators all made by RCEL. The bombs were defused.