Bag full of explosives found inside Allahabad HC, man held

A plastic bag full of explosives was found inside the high-security Allahabad High Court premises, sending authorities into a tizzy, even as police on Friday claimed to have arrested a man who had allegedly kept the packet at the spot and later raised an alarm with the hope of getting rewarded with a permanent job for his “alertness”.

Addressing a press conference this evening, Senior Superintendent of Police, Allahabad, Shalabh Mathur said Santosh Kumar Agrahari (38), who had been running errands at the high court on an ad hoc basis for over a decade, was arrested after a perusal of CCTV footage of last night wherein his movements appeared to be “furtive and suspicious”.

“We therefore took Agrahari into custody for interrogation though he happened to be the one who had raised an alarm about the plastic bag lying inside a court room. He confessed that he had himself prepared the packet, kept it at the spot and later raised an alarm with the hope that he would be appreciated for his alertness and rewarded with a permanent job at the high court,” Mathur said.

“Agrahari, who hails from Amethi and lives here with his family, has claimed that he was badly in need of stable employment. Acting out of desperation, he prepared the packet enclosing a lunch box which contained a plastic ball smeared with gunpowder - to make it look like a menacing bomb. He also placed inside the plastic bag some firecrackers for good measure,” Mathur said.