Chennai sat on a powder keg till Beirut dawned on it

The seismic waves created in Beirut blast, according to explosive experts, were equivalent to an earthquake of magnitude in the range of 3 to 4 in Richter scale. The stock of ammonium nitrate in Beirut port weighed roughly 2,500 metric tonnes. It got offloaded from a Russian ship on its way to Mozambique unintentionally in Beirut due to some trouble and dispute in ship’s internal management.

The stock held in Chennai was only one-fourth of Beirut stock. It was only 740 metric tonnes. But this was not an unload due to extraneous circumstances as in Beirut but a deliberate illegal import without any licence by a chemical company in Karur.

Ammonium nitrate outwardly is an innocuous chemical compound but has ingrained within it deadly explosive lethality under certain chemical and atmospheric conditions. Though this compound is generally and widely utilised as fertiliser in agriculture operations and mining endeavours, instances galore wherein the innocuous ammonium nitrate has been effectively utilised as a basic material in deadly explosives by terrorist organisations. Numerous instances had been there when ammonium nitrate accidents had caused terrible disasters as in devastating a government building in Oklahoma City in 1995. A massive explosion in a chemical warehouse storing ammonium nitrate in China in 2015 had killed 173 workers.

Realising the devilish potency of ammonium nitrate, the Government of India categorised it in 2011 as an explosive under the Indian Explosives Act 1884. It, further, framed rules to regulate the manufacture, import, possess, sale, and use of ammonium nitrate in 2012.

According to these rules, one must possess a licence called P3 licence to possess and sell ammonium nitrate and to import, a P5 licence. Further, according to rules, the importer should intimate the authorities at the importing station even before loading the stuff at the exporting station.

The 740 metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate — impounded, stored and moved out of Chennai port after the Beirut blast — was stuff that was imported from Korea without a P5 import licence. Therefore the stock from Korea, as it landed, was seized and stocked in the port by the Customs Department.

The importer pleaded in the High Court of Madras to release the stock from the Customs Department but was not successful.

The course of the proceedings in the High Court threw up a few startling facts regarding the trade in this chemical by the importing firm. It was revealed that the company had imported often without licence substantial quantity of ammonium nitrate through other ports too and had disposed it of to unauthorised dealers.

In the court, the importer himself averred that he had sold 92MT of ammonium nitrate so imported to Tamilnadu Cement Corporation, which, on verification, was found to be a deliberate falsehood.

It was also reported that out of 740 metric tonnes of explosives illegally imported and seized, about 40 tonnes have got dissolved in the floods!

Various intelligence agencies and the press had reported that in 2012 alone about 4,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate had gone missing. Another report mentioned that there was no account of the disposal of 16,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate over four years.

It is obvious that there are loose administration and want of care and alacrity in the handling of this chemical, apparently on the presumption that it is only a fertiliser and innocuous. But just imagine the holocaust that would result in case there is any mischief or accident.

The recent Chennai episode of import, seizure, forfeit and storage raise some nagging questions:

•Did the Customs Department inform on time the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), entrusted by Government of India to control and administer the usage of explosives, about the seizure and stocking of such large quantity of ammonium nitrate in its Container Freight Station? What action was taken by it, if informed?

•What action was taken by PESO for the last five years on the stock seized? Remember, it could haste through an e-auction immediately after the Beirut blast. Was it lethargy or carelessness? Or was it because of public and press cry for safety in the aftermath of the Holocaust of Beirut?

•Did the Customs Department take special steps to segregate and stock the seized material in safety mode as enjoined in rules?

•Were the Police and District Collector kept informed by PESO or the Customs Department, when such heavy quantity of potential explosive was seized and stored, especially when many such nefarious deeds had been perpetrated previously, as it is the Police which is empowered to initiate criminal action? The PESO is empowered only to suspend the licence.

•Did the Intelligence in the State and Centre report to their headquarters about such unlicenced import, dissolution in floods, and clandestine sale and distribution?

•What action was taken on the importer who falsified in the court that he sold ammonium nitrate to Tamilnadu Cement Corporation?

•Has there been a statewide check of dealers of ammonium nitrate by various agencies in the aftermath of Beirut blast?

•Rule 50 gives exclusive and enormous powers to Controllers of Explosives to destroy any ammonium nitrate wherever found when they have reasons to believe that ammonium nitrate rules have been flouted; or that the stuff they found was not fit for any further use; and that the matter was urgent and brooks no delay and fraught with serious danger to the public. When they had such sweeping powers to destroy why is it there was no action by PESO for five years.

The officials of PESO had been at lightning speed only after Beirut to get the consignment out of the port to wash their hands of the issue but does that absolve them as well as other agencies of their ‘tortoisian’ sluggishness for five long years.

Thank God, we were spared of a Beirut!