The tragic explosion at a police station in Srinagar, which claimed nine lives and left dozens injured, is a sobering reminder of a persistent and largely unaddressed vulnerability within India’s internal security apparatus: the handling and storage of seized explosives. What should have been a routine administrative process ~ moving confiscated materials for forensic examination, although why material seized in Faridabad had to be examined in Srinagar remains unexplained – turned into a catastrophe because of a preventable lapse. It is important to emphasise what this incident is not. It is not a terror attack, nor is it part of a coordinated assault on security forces. But the absence of malicious intent does not diminish the scale of the tragedy.

In some ways, accidents of this nature reveal deeper systemic weaknesses than adversarial strikes do. When the institutions tasked with preventing violence inadvertently enable it through negligence, the consequences raise profound questions about safety standards,........

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