A 45-year-old furniture trader lost 3 fingers when a sound grenade he picked up beside a rubbish dump exploded in Sreepur, Gazipur, on Friday morning.
The incident occurred around 9am in the Satiabari area of Rajabari Union in the upazila. Members of the Special Response Battalion (SRB) Gazipur Porabari Camp, the SRB Dhaka Bomb Disposal Team and Sreepur police visited the scene.
Debajit Paul, squad commander of the Special Response Battalion-1 (SRB-1) Gazipur Porabari Camp, said information from the bomb disposal team indicated that the device was a police sound grenade lost from a police station on August 5.
The injured man, Nur Mohammad, son of Abdul Khalek, is a furniture trader in the area. Local residents rescued him and took him to Shaheed Tajuddin Ahmad Medical College Hospital in Gazipur, where he is receiving treatment.
Police and local residents said Nur Mohammad had gone to urinate near a pile of rubbish beside his shop. After noticing an object resembling a cocktail bomb in the pile, he picked it up and handled it.
Unable to identify the object, he pulled out its safety ring, causing it to explode and sever 3 fingers on his left hand.
Sreepur Police Station Officer-in-Charge Mohammad Shahinur Alam said Nur Mohammad had picked up a plastic or container-like object from a pile of rubbish behind a shop and carried it to the front after returning from urinating.
Several people sitting there warned him not to handle the object. However, it exploded while he was handling it, severing 3 of his fingers.
Police are investigating how the object came to be there. Legal action will be taken following an investigation into the incident, Shahinur Alam added.
