Santosh Khushwaha, 22, a hired hand, lies in hospital with shrapnel injuries. So does his co-worker Lal Chand, 55, who sustained serious injuries. While working on the bulk pressing machine, a deafening blast had ripped through the steel scrap factory at Ghaziabad on September 30. But 10 other labourers at the Bhushan Steel and Strips Ltd factory were not so lucky. They died on the spot when the container of scrap metal they were melting exploded. The "death metal" was mixed with 43 explosives.

A wave of panic has been let loose after the Ghaziabad tragedy. The spate of arms recoveries has come as a rude wake-up call to industrial units, which stand exposed to the metal waste imported from war-ravaged countries. The problem is not confined to the National Capital Region. A fortnight after the Ghaziabad incident, rockets, missiles, projectiles, spent ammunition, shells and mortars have been found near steel yards, smelting markets, in fields and drains in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Punjab (see graphic).

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HAZARD (Left) Live shells found at the steel yard at Kalamboli, Navi Mumbai; workers injured in the Ghaziabad explosion

Though intelligence agencies don't perceive a "terrorist angle" in the recoveries, they have thrown up disturbing questions about the safety of ports and inland container depots (ICDs) that receive these "potentially lethal" shipment. With no monitoring systems in place, customs officials are surprised that no major mishap occurred when the heavy metal consignments were brought in. Equally distressing is the absence of scanners and bomb detection equipment at ports and ICDs. "Considering the huge volumes of metal scrap which come into India, there is a possibility that a terrorist outfit could have designs to destabilise the country," says a RAW official.

THE NEW UXO THREAT

The retrieval of huge quantities of the lethal ammunition has blown the lid off the potential danger swamping the country. Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) finds its way into war waste from the battlefields of West Asia, Somalia and Rwanda which is auctioned as scrap metal. India is the favoured dumping ground as it is the biggest importer of cheap scrap for its secondary steel market. "So far we don't see a conspiracy but it is certainly a cause for worry," says Union Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal.

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The ammunition in scrap has its roots in the industry's insatiable demand for steel. Scrap prices have nearly doubled from $100 (Rs 4,600) a tonne to over $250. Steel importers claim that imports have gone up 10-fold in the past three years. Insiders say the amount of UXOs mixed with the scrap metal would range between 3 and 5 per cent, depending on its source, the port of entry and the volumes transacted. Siddarth Kak, member (Customs) of the Central Board of Excise Customs (CBEC) says, "Loose metal scrap is one-fourth the price of processed scrap and that is why India has emerged as one of the favourite destinations." From India's western border, through Pakistan, Afghanistan and West Asia, the debris of past wars is claiming innocent lives.

Army officers maintain that most of the ammunition recovered in these consignments include live 130 mm and 155 mm medium artillery shells, burnt out rockets with residual explosive, 81 mm and 120 mm mortars, hand grenades and projectiles. "Luckily, the shells and grenades do not have pins or delivery systems so they cannot be converted by terrorists into weapons," says a colonel.

SHOCKING LAPSES

Considering that over 3 million metric tonnes of metal scrap, worth over Rs 5,500 crore, is brought into the country every year, monitoring its entry is difficult. Besides, there is only one scanner among the 12 major ports and ICDs in the country, at Jawaharlal Nehru port, better known as Nhava Sheva, in Mumbai. Kandla and Mundra ports, which handle larger volumes do not have these machines. R.T. Revankar, traffic manager at Kandla port, says, "Installing scanners at the ports is a way out of the present crisis." His sentiments are echoed by Saheb Singh, commissioner at Tughlakabad's ICD in Delhi. "Checking is manual and so it is difficult to determine what exactly are in these consignments." Sandip Mehta, president of Adani port at Mundra, adds, "Scrap should come in shredded form. This will eliminate the possibility of explosives being packed in."

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BOOMING TRADE: (left) Kandla port handles huge volumes of scrap imports; the Raipur yard where rockets were found

Intensive searching of containers has been discouraged as a matter of policy. Security concerns have been given the go-by in the face of relentless lobbying from business houses, demanding faster clearance of cargo. "It is physically impossible to spread out the scrap in each container as it will take days," says an official at Kandla.

The bullish scrap market has attracted a huge number of fly-by-night operators. Regulations are rarely followed and scrap dealers have no qualms about shopping in strife-torn nations. So the scrap is sold to India, a dumpyard ready to receive anything from toxic ships to live ammunition. Consider the revelations of an unnamed UK-based merchant trying to sell 220 disused Iraqi tanks and over 1,20,000 tonnes of mixed metal scrap from Basra and quoted in the April issue of the International Metal Bulletin: "We have some interests in China and India for the material. We are looking into the logistics to see how we can safely export it out of Iraq.''

The UN's Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission estimates that scrap company managers exported over 70,000 tonnes of scrap metal out of Iraq through neighbouring countries like Jordan. Battlefield scrap-wrecked fighter planes, tanks and ammunition are internationally traded commodities but their import is prohibited in India. Strangely, this concern does not extend to the ammunition routinely auctioned from the ordnance factories or those auctioned to contractors from army test ranges. Jordan banned the import of Iraqi scrap earlier this year after it was discovered that the waste, which originated in the Middle East and was shipped to Rotterdam, was radioactive and contained missile engines.

RISK ZONES

The incidents of ammunition recovery are in themselves telling. At the Kalamboli-Navi Mumbai steel market near the Mumbai-Pune expressway, the police have been rummaging through godowns after UXO was discovered in nearly 1 tonne of inert mortar bombs, spent anti-aircraft cannon shells, heavy machine gun rounds, hand grenades and howitzer rounds. "The cache of arms, stuffed into jute bags, was found abandoned in a drain near the steel yard. We are trying to nab the importers but it is going to be difficult," says Senior Inspector Subash Kuber.

Around the same time in Bulandshahr, Uttar Pradesh, authorities chanced upon a cache of 256 explosives, including 156 missiles and 63 live rockets and bombs. The police suspect that two steel companies-Saini Steel and Gangeshwar Steel-located in the industrial area of Sikandrabad, may have dumped the explosives to avoid the combing operations. Bulandshahr's District Magistrate Abhishek Singh believes the increased security after the blast had made steel manufacturers wary. Then, a raid in a steel plant in Jaipur on October 9 led to the seizure of 90 mortars and rockets. "Suddenly, live shells are popping up everywhere and it is raining rockets," says an IB official.

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THE HAUL: Heavy artillery gun found at a Jaipur factory. Ninety mortars and rockets were recovered during a raid.

In Raipur, workers at the Godavari Ispat in Siltara rummaged through heaps of scrap in their yard and came upon hundreds of rockets. "The factory was cordoned off and we found more than 150 rockets and 15 of them were live," says Raipur's Inspector General, D.M. Awasthi. A security ring has been thrown around steel factories in five other districts.

The recovery of explosive material in scrap in various parts of the country pales into insignificance compared to what goes on in Alang, a ship-breaking yard in Gujarat. It is the largest scrap market in the world with an annual turnover of nearly $500 million (Rs 2,750 crore). With almost unfailing regularity, workers die or are maimed because of explosions and fires. Most of these deaths go unnoticed. In addition to cargo and passenger ships, battleships, including aircraft carriers, are sent to Alang to be dismantled. "Explosions and deaths are a common phenomenon while destroying such warships," says a port official.

The 1,000 tonnes of scrap metal imported by Bhushan Steel and Strips Ltd from Dubai-based Lucky Metals was cleared by Metco Marketing India Pvt Ltd in Mumbai. The scrap, which originated from Bander Abbas port in Iran, was loaded from the Gulf in August and unloaded at different times in Mundra, Gujarat before finding its way to Delhi. "This was obviously done with the connivance of Customs. Otherwise how could so many explosives find their way into containers?" says a CBEC official.

"UNSAFE" GUARDS

Taking note of the discoveries of explosives in imported scrap, the Union Home Ministry has belatedly ordered a nationwide inspection of iron and steel factories and formed a co-ordination group comprising the IB, Customs and the Directorate General of Foreign Trade. The recoveries have forced Director-General of Foreign Trade K.T. Chacko to make minor amendments in the import policy. Import of metal scrap originating from war zones will now be subject to "100 per cent inspection of unshredded and uncompacted materials" and will also need a certificate from exporters declaring the material is "safe." In addition, Finance Ministry officials have sought the help of forensic experts to probe major import consignments.

But the safeguards are hardly a deterrent. Concern is now centred on the 100 kg of depleted uranium shells used by US aircraft and tanks to attack Iraqi tanks in recent months. The worrying thought is that these could find their way into scrap exports from Iraq soon. The recoveries till date could just be the tip of the iceberg. The real message is that India has become a playground for UXOs.

-with Uday Mahurkar, Neeraj Mishra and Rohit Parihar

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