Ahmedabad: Three major cracker factory explosions in Gujarat over the past 16 months, in which 32 people died, have exposed a recurring pattern in which accused linked to earlier cases allegedly continued operating hazardous units, raising questions over the monitoring of repeat offenders involved in illegal explosives businesses.The latest disaster occurred in Ramol on July 18 — an explosion at an illegal firecracker unit claimed 10 lives and left five critically injured. Police investigations have revealed that one of the main accused persons, Sadik Saiyed, was also an accused in the June 27 Kapadvanj firecracker factory blast that killed one worker.Investigators said Saiyed had been absconding in the Kapadvanj case when he allegedly joined Ramila Dodiya and Mehul Dodiya in operating the Ramol unit.According to records obtained by TOI, the Ramol factory began operating about 20 days before the blast, after the accused secured firecracker orders for Ganesh Chaturthi.Police suspect Saiyed shifted nearly 14 workers from the Kapadvanj unit to Ramol after the earlier explosion. Like the Ramol unit, the Kapadvanj factory was allegedly operating without the required permissions.The Ramol case has also revived memories of the April 2025 Deesa explosion in Banaskantha that killed 21 workers from Madhya Pradesh. The principal accused in that case, father-son duo Deepak Mohnani and Khubchand Mohnani, allegedly recruited workers from Harda in Madhya Pradesh, where a firecracker factory explosion in Feb 2024 had killed 11 people. Twenty workers who survived the Harda blast later travelled to Gujarat for work, and all of them died in the Deesa explosion.Investigators had found that Deepak Mohnani was acquainted with the accused in the Harda case and had earlier been booked by Gujarat police in a betting case. However, no detailed scrutiny of his alleged activities followed, allowing him to continue operating an illegal firecracker business until the Deesa tragedy.In the Ramol case, police records show that Ramila Dodiya had also been accused in a 2014 firecracker factory explosion case in which a 14-year-old boy was killed. Though her licence was cancelled after that incident, investigators said a fresh licence was later obtained in 2020 in the name of her son, Mehul Dodiya. The Ramol premises had been shut by police in March this year, but the owners chose to resume operations when police got busy with the rath yatra bandobast.
