Bhubaneswar: Police on Thursday seized 32 live crude bombs from a fabrication unit at Laxmi Sagar and apprehended five persons.

The cops said the fabrication unit is owned by Bha-ratiya Janata Yuva Morcha general secretary Rakesh Je-na, who was arrested on February 14 for the attack on the official residence of chief minister Naveen Patnaik's private secretary V. Karthikeyan Pandian on February 10.

Acting on a tip-off, the police they raided the fabrication unit and found the bombs concealed in two buckets there. The accused have been identified as Subashish Sahani, 30, Jyotiprakash Mohanty, 28, Debraj Naik, 27, Pabana Naik, 36, and Sipun Kumar Kabi, 28.

All the five accused were experts in bomb-manufacturing and were involved in several bombing cases in Cuttack, Angul and Dhenkanal districts, the cops said, adding that the accused have confessed to their involvement in a bombing case in Jharapada on December 13 last year. They had hurled five crude bombs on the house of one Sanjay Srichandan there.

"Preliminary investigations have revealed that Jena had hired the five and paid them Rs 50,000 as advance for manufacturing the bombs. While five of the bombs were used in the Jharapada incident, the remaining bombs were kept in the fabrication unit," said a police official.

Deputy commissioner of police Satyabrata Bhoi said that they would bring Jena under remand for further investigation.

"These crude bombs are high-intensity bombs and are capable of causing enough damage," said Bhoi.