Lesson from Pathankot: NSG to revise bomb disposal norms

NEW DELHI: The National Security Guard ( NSG) will revise the standard operating procedure (SOP) for its bomb disposal squad to avoid a re-run of Pathankot incident where a Lieutenant Colonel lost his life in a grenade explosion.

Lt Colonel Niranjan KK died while he was carrying out body search of one of the slain JeM militant at the Pathankot Air Base on the second day of the attack.

The modalities to revise the SOP will include field reports from Pathankot, DG (NSG) RC Tayal told ET. The DG denied there was any negligence on the part of the team that was assigned to defuse the explosives. “They followed the SOP,” Tayal told ET.

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The revised guidelines are likely to require search of a pouch or cavity in a militant’s body and there is a proposal that the search should be conducted by commandoes while wearing protection gear like ‘bomb suit’.

“The suit which weighs several tons cannot be worn for more than 40 minutes and at Pathankot, the BDS team used these suits while dragging the body through a rope,” said a top NSG official who was part of the contingent.

According to officials familiar with the operation, Niranjan discovered the ammunition pouch on the body of the dead militant at 9.30 am on January 3. A trained member of BDS, Niranjan is learnt to have noticed the grenade in the ammunition pouch while searching the body.

“The moment he took it out of the ammunition pouch, he seems to have realized that the pin that locks the grenade is out but by that time it was too late. The grenade seems to have exploded in his right hand,” said a senior NSG official.

The operations at Pathankot were on till January7 but NSG officials said that they were primarily carrying out the combing and searching after January 4 that was necessary to rule out possibility of any other militants and also declare the area safe from explosives.