Fireworks, fuses and rockets all count: how the Explosives Act of 1884 defines an explosive, as a commission reports on Mundathikode

Background

A judicial commission looking at the Mundathikode fireworks case has reported that 7,000 kg of material was kept where the permitted quantity was 15 kg, and that banned potassium chlorate was in use. The legal frame for all of this is the Explosives Act. Its definition clause, substituted in 1978, lists what an explosive is: gunpowder, nitroglycerine, gun-cotton, picric acid, fulminate of mercury and a long roll of named compounds, and then any other substance, solid, liquid or gaseous, used or made to produce a practical effect by explosion or a pyrotechnic effect. The same clause expressly includes fog-signals, fireworks, fuses, rockets, percussion-caps, detonators, cartridges and ammunition of every description. Carriage covers any wagon, cart, truck or vehicle that moves goods or passengers by land, and in an area with a Commissioner of Police it is that Commissioner who is the District Magistrate for the Act's purposes.