Mangalore International Airport bomb scare: Backpack didn’t contain IED, say cops

BENGALURU: Investigation by Bengaluru police revealed that Mangaluru Police had jumped the gun by saying the backpack found near the Mangalore International Airport on Monday contained components of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).
Aditya Rao, who surrendered on Wednesday morning, reportedly told police he packed sulphur and waste items in the backpack. “I never prepared a bomb. All I did was to stuff sulphur and other material inside a polythene bag,” Rao told police.
Soon after detonating the material in an open field on Monday, Mangaluru city police commissioner PS Harsha had announced they suspected the backpack had an IED.
Some senior Benglauru police officers felt the drama of detonating the ‘bomb’ in a controlled explosion was not warranted as it caused panic. “All they had to do was defuse the device. We have defused many IEDs, including those recovered near Chinnaswamy Stadium in 2010. We feel that vital evidence has been lost by blasting the explosive,” they said.
They added: “The decision to detonate the material could have been the result of nonavailability of experts who could defuse it.” In fact, sniffer dogs which are trained to detect explosives in baggage also failed to tag the bag left behind by Aditya Rao.
Sources added: “Sniffer dogs at airports are trained to detect explosives from nitrocellulose, nitroglycerin, RDX and related material. The dogs didn’t point to Rao’s bag as it did not contain any lethal material.”
According to officers, defining an explosive as an ‘IED’ has become common.
However, other officers backed the Mangaluru police action. “Bombs and IEDs prepared by professionals can be defused. Such bombs have electrical circuits and timers. Experts know these circuits and can easily defuse them. But explosives like the one prepared by Rao, which are too dangerous to carry around, cannot be defused easily. Though it was coming off in layers, nobody could predict what was in the inner layers. It’s too risky to open such devices as they can explode at any time,” they explained.