KP BDU saves thousands of lives since 2009

PESHAWAR: The bomb disposal unit (BDU) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has saved thousands of lives by foiling at least 137 suicide attacks and defusing 4653 explosive devices since 2009.

From a small squad of a few experts working within limited resources and no incentives for risking their lives, the BDU was made a proper unit when the province was hit by terrorism almost a decade ago.

"The experts of the BDU risked their lives on innumerable occasions to save the lives of the general public. They have foiled 4653 attacks in KP since 2009," Mohammad Ali Gandapur, the deputy inspector general of the Special Branch told The News. The BDU works under the Special Branch.

As per the record of the BDU, 137 suicide attacks were foiled during the last almost one decade that could have resulted in deaths and injuries to thousands of people. This figure does not include the attacks foiled in the erstwhile Fata as the police were extended to the former tribal areas only a couple of years ago.

As many as 40 attacks with explosive-laden vehicles were also foiled by the BDU during the time, states revealed. Some of these vehicles were carrying hundreds of kg explosives. In one such case in 2013, law-enforcers and BDU foiled an attack by an explosives laden truck that was carrying 4000 kg explosives. There were few other such incidents in which vehicles were carrying hundreds of kg explosives.

"Besides this, the BDU defused 456 remote controlled explosive devices and 586 timed explosive devices as well as hundreds of rockets and hand-grenades in the last one decade," said Ali Gandapur.

The official said the BDU KP also provided expert teams and other kinds of assistance in some of the high profile cases to other provinces. Some of these high-profile cases included the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto Shaheed and attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

According to the DIG Special Branch, a number of BDU experts embraced martyrdom and several others were injured while saving the lives of people by defusing bombs. "At least 16 of the BDU experts were martyred while many others were critically injured while defusing explosives on different occasions across KP," said AIG BDU Shafqat Malik.

The job of bomb disposal men is one of the toughest in the world. On many occasions the terrorists planted a second bomb as a booby trap to target these bomb disposal experts. A team of BDU experts rushed to Daudzai area a couple of years ago after an earlier explosion that killed a policeman, Nazir. As a BDU expert Zahid was searching for explosives near a makeshift police post, set up for the security of the anti-polio vaccinators, another IED was found.

"When the BDU official was defusing the IED and went close to it, the explosives went off. Policemen ran towards Zahid when he fell down on the ground after the explosion," recalled a policeman.

He said the protection gear, which the BDU experts normally don’t use due to its weight, saved Zahid from being killed or critically wounded. An expert said the secondary devices were planted with anti-lift switch on many occasions to booby trap the BDU person who will be happy to detect and defuse it.

The BDU martyrs included some of the top experts like Inspector Hukam Khan and Inspector Abdul Haq. Hukam Khan was martyred while defusing explosives in Matani near Peshawar. Abdul Haq was martyred along with three of his men when their car was attacked with an IED in Badaber after being called to defuse another IED in 2012. The two along with their teams defused hundreds of explosives during their lives.

Some of the BDU experts, including Inayatullah alias Tiger, lost one or the other parts of their body while defusing bombs. Inayatullah sustained critical injuries when a bomb went off in Kulachi in Dera Ismail Khan while he was defusing it. He is still doing his job with more commitment. The KP BDU has been given bomb detecting and defusing robots that can detect and defuse explosives from a safe distance. However, these robots can move only in plain areas.