Ayodhya (UP), Feb 7 (PTI) A woman and her 8-year-old son died and her two other children were critically injured Thursday when an army shell they were trying to dismantle went off near the Faizabad Cantonment area, police said.

Firing and training of heavy explosive devices is a routine practice in the Cantonment area.

According to police, the explosion took place when the woman, identified as Rina Nishad (30), and her three children were trying to open an unexploded heavy explosive device to take out brass.

They found the explosive device in the vicinity of the Faizabad Cantonment

Faizabad SP (City) Anil Kumar Singh Sisodia told PTI that Nishad and her one child Raj (8) died while her two children Atul (7) and Manju (5) were critically injured.

The people living in periphery of the Cantonment area use to collect missed and unexploded explosive devices, possibly grenades or mortar shells to take out the brass used to make the explosive devices, the SP (City) said.

Local police say that scrap dealers men usually enter the prohibited areas of the Cantonment firing range and collect fired bullets, brass shells of fired bullets and some time they get unexploded grenades or mortars containing lot of brass.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)