Raipur: Two young men have been arrested for allegedly stealing 14 live bombs of the Indian Army from a goods train here, a police officer said Monday.
Amit Sharma, 21, and Satyendra Giri, 16, were detained by the police Saturday.
"The men have confessed to have barged into a sealed wagon of a goods train at Mandhar station Friday night. It was carrying arms and ammunitions for the Indian Army," District Superintendent of Police Amit Kumar said.
He said the men broke open the wagon when it halted at Mandhar station, 20 km from here, and took away seven boxes assuming they contained steel. The train was on its way to the Central Ammunition Depot Pulgaon of Wardha in Maharashtra from the ordnance factory in Badmal, Orissa.
"When they found bombs in the boxes, they threw six boxes in another goods train loaded with iron ore and one box was left at the backyard of the station," he said.
The goods train, in which the six boxes were thrown, reached the station Saturday morning when employees of Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd. recovered the bombs while unloading the iron ore. Each wooden box contained two bombs.
The remaining two 105-mm live bombs were seized by the police from Mandhar railway station.
"Mastermind of the case, 20-year-old Vishnu Verma, is at large," the police officer added.
Experts from the ordnance factory at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh were later called by the police for examining the bombs. The explosives were then defused at an isolated location Sunday.
