Loss, denial, mourning: Inside Bengal's village of explosives

Rahima Bibi sits on the road with three other women, draped in a faded red-and-yellow sari, and a shroud of silence. On her lap is a pink winnower, holding a pair of rusted steel scissors and a pile of crushed tobacco

- Joydeep Thakur , Sreyasi Pal

The women work in silence, their practised fingers rolling beedis. The silence is unbroken even when they are asked the directions to the home of Jerat Sheikh, who was killed with eight others at an illegal "firecracker factory" two weeks ago. Nutan Chandra is a village in mourning. But Nutan Chandra is a village that has been in mourning several times before.

On August 27, a powerful blast at a building in Duttapukur in North 24 Paraganas, barely 30km north of Kolkata, left nine people dead. So powerful was the explosion that three homes collapsed entirely; three others suffered extensive damage; the bodies of some victims were ripped apart, parts flinging several metres away from the blast site.

As always, almost inevitably in West Bengal, questions were asked if this was indeed an illegal firecracker factory, or crossed the thin but deadly line into a cottage crude bomb-making unit.

Police found sacks full of stone chips in the gutted premises; and in makeshift shelters inside a brick kiln about a kilometre away, a makeshift laboratory with beakers and test tubes.

Police have officially maintained that was a firecracker factory, albeit illegal, and not the more sinister alternative. They are still waiting for the final forensic reports even after more than two weeks of the incident.

"Thus far, we have not found anything which suggests that there was the manufacturing of crude countrymade bombs. Even the preliminary forensic reports suggest so. We are yet to get the final report," Bhaskar Mukherjee, superintendent of Barasat police district, told HT.

He said that police have seized more than 350 tonnes (350,000 kilos) of firecrackers stacked in multiple godowns located within a 2-3km radius of the blast site along with raw material such as explosives, cellophane papers and packing machines.