Following the unearthing of a cache of unexploded mortars from the campus of Cornerstone Higher Secondary School in Zunheboto on Monday by security personnel, the Principal of Cornerstone HSS informed that a bomb disposal team from Kohima had arrived at the school on Tuesday, 22 August, at around one in the evening.
“The team has conducted a search using a detector today, but they couldn’t find anything more,” the principal told Mokokchung Times.
A total of 13 mortars were unearthed on Monday from the school campus. According to the principal, it was the school’s gardener who first stumbled upon them while cleaning the school compound on Monday.
“The gardener unearthed four of them. And when he told me, I immediately informed the Assam Rifles because I did not have contact with the SP office,” the principal added. After that, he mentioned that it was the district administration along with the Assam Rifles that arrived at the spot.
“The Assam Rifles extracted the remaining nine mortars from the site,” he added.
Regarding what the research team has found, uncertainty remains, but according to the principal, elderly individuals around Zunheboto have informed him that an Assam Rifle camp used to be located in the same place where the school now stands.
“I am learning from some elderly people around here who have provided me with information that in 1957, an Assam Rifle camp used to be situated at this location, where Cornerstone Higher Secondary is now located. I believe this must be the connection in discovering these bombs,” the principal said.
“It was only after the research team left that I called up a relative and learned about it,” he said.
He further rebuked the claim made by certain news outlets that even “arms and ammunition” were found and clarified that no arms were discovered, only mortar shells.
“Some of them are also reporting something like the school had a connection with an underground group and that we provided them with the space to bury things here, but I think that is not accurate information and lacks proper investigation,” he said, urging people to refrain from spreading such faulty reports.
The Cornerstone Higher Secondary School was shut down today as a preventive measure. However, the school shall resume from Wednesday, 23 August.