Raiganj, Sept. 6: A seized crude bomb lying in a bag for a month in a police station today exploded in the face of the officer who had not checked the contents after confiscation.

Along with sub-inspector Paran Mondal, two others in Itahar police station were injured - a policeman and a civic volunteer.

According to Sujit Ghosh, the deputy superintendent of police of Raiganj, the bag was seized along with eight other crude bombs from different places when police went for raids a month back to round up robber gangs in Churaman, Durgapur and Radhanagar, all in North Dinajpur.

Mondal, who was till last month posted at Itahar police station, was the investigating officer for the Radhanagar case, from where the bag had been seized.

"Whenever bombs are seized, the standard procedure is that they are kept in an isolated place and ringed with sand or kept in water," Ghosh said.

"Even though the bag was seized about a month back, none of the preventive procedures was followed in this case. We are investigating why the precautions were not taken," he said.

This morning, Mondal, who has recently been transferred to Raiganj police station, went to Itahar to get the documents ready for the Radhanagar case as he had been the investigation officer.

He opened the bag to check its contents and the bomb exploded. "Mondal pulled the bag kept in the office room. There was immediately an explosion, which left him and two others injured," an officer said.

Mondal and his colleagues are now recuperating from burns in the district hospital in Raiganj.

The officer, whose face, ears and abdomen have been scalded, said from his hospital bed that he had seized the bag from some robbers but had "no clue a crude bomb was in it". Asked why he had not checked the bag, the officer said he would speak no further.

Raiganj police has ordered an inquiry into the incident by an officer of the rank of deputy superintendent.

The room where the bomb went off has been sealed by the police.

"Recently, members of a bomb disposal squad came to the police station and defused the other bombs. However, there was one live bomb in the bag seized during the raid at Radhanagar which was not noticed," a police source said.

"I was on duty. There was a loud sound in the office room and dense smoke. Three persons, including the sub-inspector, were injured and lying on the floor. We picked them up and rushed them to the hospital," a constable who was on duty at the police station, said.

Immediately after the incident, Kalyan Gurung, the inspector in charge of Itahar police station, sealed the room.

The two others injured are Dipankar Chakraborty, an assistant sub-inspector, and Manirul Islam, a civic volunteer.

Both of them were working at the office room.