Nagpur: Former home minister Anil Deshmukh on Monday demanded criminal cases and arrests against senior officials responsible for alleged negligence following the deadly explosion at the SBL Energy Limited explosives unit in Katol taluka that killed 19 workers.Speaking at a high-level review meeting chaired by Nagpur district guardian minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule at the divisional commissioner’s office, Deshmukh accused regulatory authorities of ignoring repeated warnings about safety lapses in explosives factories across the district.Deshmukh said he wrote on September 8, 2025, urging authorities to conduct safety audits of all explosives manufacturing units, but the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO) and the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health (DISH) failed to act.“FIRs must be registered and arrests made against the senior officials responsible for negligence,” Deshmukh said. “I wrote demanding safety audits of all explosives companies, but no action was taken by PESO or DISH. Because of this inaction, lives were lost.”He said nearly 46 workers died in blasts in Nagpur district over the past 2 and a half years, warning that repeated accidents reflected systemic failure to enforce safety norms.“Merely filing cases will not stop this. Strict preventive measures are required. Companies that do not follow safety norms must be shut down immediately and their licences cancelled,” he said.Deshmukh also warned that if transparent safety audits of all sensitive factories were not conducted through an independent agency within days, a mass agitation would be launched for worker safety.Ramtek MP Shyamkumar Barve said a high-level, impartial, and time-bound inquiry must fix responsibility and ensure such incidents do not recur.The meeting was attended by minister of state for finance and planning Ashish Jaiswal, divisional commissioner Vijayalakshmi Bidari, district collector Vipin Itankar, superintendent of police Harsh Poddar, and other senior officials.
