Blasting scrap

It is a huge task for the Army to dispose of tonnes of waste ammunition in
Mattiwara Reserve Forest, near Ludhiana, writes Vijay Mohan

CLAD in a Kevlar bomb suit weighing about 80 kg, a sapper uses a mechanised, battery-operated rod with a claw at one end, called a manipulator, to carefully extract a misfired bomb from a pile of metal scrap and place it on a sand bed. Thereafter, a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), controlled by another sapper from the safety of sand bags a 100 yards away, moves such pieces of ordnance on to a tractor-trolley driven by a similarly clad sapper for transporting them for disposal to a demolition site 2 km away.

At the demolition site, where special 10-metre wide, 5-metre deep pits have been dug to place and detonate the scrap ammunition, it is again a tedious job to pick up each piece of ammunition by manipulators and slowly walk down the 50-metre slope into the pit. Demolition experts attach explosives to the scrap, wire-up charges and detonators — all under the careful supervision of an officer — and clear the area. Minutes later the calm of the forest is shattered by an explosion followed by a cloud of dust.

For the Army it is a huge task and it is a rare training opportunity to dispose of about 50 tonnes of scrap ammunition, amounting to about 17,000 pieces, that have found their way to India as part of metal scrap imported by the steel industry. It is an exercise that the Army estimates would take over three months. For inhabitants of villages adjoining the Mattiwara Reserve Forest near Ludhiana, it is a daily grind of evacuating their houses and moving along with their livestock early morning to nearby safer areas and returning late afternoon.

This is the biggest such exercise undertaken by the Army. Under Operation Saiyam, launched by Western Command in November for disposing off scrap munitions lying at the Ludhiana dry port for the past six years, Army combat engineers are carrying out six to eight demolitions each day. Each demolition job, involving several pieces of ammunition collectively weighing under 100 kg due to safety factors, takes about three hours to extract from stockpiles kept in steel cargo containers.

For the Army, the biggest spin-off is the realistic training environment the operation has generated. "The magnitude of the operation is a rare training opportunity. We are rotating troops every week and are thus able to impart hands-on training and experience in the disposal of live munitions to a large number," says Maj Gen V.K. Bhatt, Chief Engineer, Western Command, who is overseeing the exercise.

Officers said when troops operate under stress and caution-generated circumstances while handling precarious stuff that is liable to explode anytime, professional acumen goes up. Duplicating such psychosis and conditions during routine training may not always be possible.

"We are learning so many things here. It is a very tedious and time-consuming process and we just cannot rush things. This experience gained by the troops will be useful in any other similar difficult situation," says Lt Col Vinod Bhat, Officer Commanding 202 Bomb Disposal Company, that is executing the operation.

The munitions, most of which are of unknown origin and of various calibres, include bombs, mortar shells, projectiles, grenades, rockets, detonators, artillery shells and even small arms bullets. "The biggest piece we have found so far is a 210 mm shell, used by heavy artillery guns," said Colonel Bhat. There was also danger of chemical or radioactive elements being present in such scrap, and the Army had taken this into account while examining the scrap. Checks and examinations were carried out to rule out this factor.

The entire episode revealed two shortcomings. The first is the easy import of war-like material into the country in the garb of metal scrap. Some amendments have been brought about in the import procedures recently that make the receiving firms responsible for the inspection and certification of the cargo.

The other shortcoming is bureaucratic hurdles and red-tapism that delay sensitive operations. It took six years after the Army received the request for disposal, for the operation to finally commence. Till then, the munitions were lying amidst residential areas at the Ludhiana dry port.

The district administration is also closely involved in the exercise. Evacuation of villagers and their safety, cordoning of the disposal site and manning the outer perimeter are the responsibilities of the local police. Demolition begins only after the police authorities issue a daily certificate that the villages have been evacuated and there are no civilians in the designated areas. A joint Army-police control room has been set up.

For residents of Sekhowal and Kalewal villages, the closest to the demolition site, the demolition exercise has disrupted their lives. Getting up early and finishing their daily chores before they leave the warmth of their homes in the winter chill virtually daily for three months is not a pleasing drill, specially for kids and the elderly. Moreover, they cannot tend to their fields or perform other tasks on which their daily livelihood depends.

The government had little choice in the villagers’ plight. Mattiwara Reserve Forest proved to be the most pragmatic location to dispose of the munitions as it was not advisable to move four huge cargo containers containing potentially dangerous stuff by road over longer distances elsewhere.

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