Arms trader seeks removal of explosives from his godown

MADURAI: An arms trader has filed a writ petition at the Madras high court seeking to either remove or defuse dangerous explosives kept in his godown by police. The godown owner D Manohar Raj approached the Madurai bench of the court here after his new trade licence conditions make him ineligible to store explosive material handed over by police.
Raj, who is a resident of Madurai, deals with arms and ammunitions through his firm situated at Keelamathikattinam in Madurai.He has been permitted by the central government to keep explosives for sales. As per his earlier licence, Raj was eligible to keep nitrate mixtures of 5,000 kg, safety fuse of 100,037 metric unit and 44,000 detonators at a time. On the basis of this licence, Raj had been accepting seized explosives from the police after they were handed over to judicial magistrates to try related cases.
Accordingly, Keelavalavu police, who had seized a few cortex wire (a type of detonating cord generally used in mining) had sent it to the petitioner's godown.
Meanwhile, the petitioner's licence was amended. As per it, he is now eligible to keep explosives for fireworks and sparkles and paper works. He is ineligible to keep the type of explosives usually sent by police for safekeeping. Hence, expressing his inability to keep explosives he had submitted a petition to the judicial magistrate at Melur on February 1 seeking to remove or to defuse the explosives by police or to move the same to some other licensed firm. Raj also cited recent explosions in a super market and other places in his petition. As there was no action, the petitioner approached the high court.
When the matter came up for admission on Thursday, the Judge R Subbiah directed the government side to get instructions to the petition.