What could possibly be common between a midnight explosion in a small Russian village in 2016 and the recent mysterious explosion at the building of Punjab Police Intelligence Wing?

The answer is—a lot. A visual examination of the remains of the projectile that was found in the aftermath of the explosion at the building in Mohali throws fresh light on the origin and journey of the Soviet-era weapon that possibly made its way to India decades after it was originally manufactured.

In February 2016, about half-past-one at night, frightened villagers of a Russian village, Voeykovo, ran out of their homes after hearing sound of an explosion. According to local news reports, a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) like projectile came crashing across the windows of a house that left the tail of the weapon somehow intact. Incidentally, the remains of the weapon used in the Voeykovo explosion had similar markings as the one found at the headquarters of Punjab Police Intelligence Wing. In fact, the first few alpha-numeric characters on both weapons are exactly the same.

A picture reported in the news from Mohali shows remains of what appears to be the rear part of the projectile that has stenciled markings "7/1 TP B/a 13-86-K" over it. These alpha-numeric drawings have been attracting speculations from all quarters about the origin of the weapon that looks strikingly similar to the design of the RPG-22 “Netto”—a soviet era anti-tank weapon produced in the 1980s.

Contrary to the popular idea, the visible markings on the weapon do not necessarily belong to the manufacturing plant. Instead, in case of Mohali incident, the visible markings most likely belong to the filling plant that filled the grenade with charger. The pattern also matches with the leaked versions of Russian supplement manuals for the upgraded RPG-7.

The markings TP B/a in English do not hold a significant meaning on its own but if these letters are translated from Russian to English, they lead us to a very specific propellant used in RPG-22 “Netto”.

The English version of the Russian marking ‘TP B/a’ is ‘TR V/a’ which indicates the properties associated with the propellant associated with grenade explosives. 7/1 TR V/a represents a nitrocellulose based single powder charger traditionally used in the RPG-22. According to expert sources, 7/1 TR represents the tubular structure of a single base explosive with a burn arch of 0.7 mm. Nitrocellulose is a highly flammable compound that has been traditionally used in many conventional propellants.

The design of the projectile seen in Mohali combined with the nature of explosive derived from the markings above strongly suggest that the weapon used in this case was most likely an RPG-22. These weapons were manufactured back in the 1980s and Russia stopped manufacturing these versions of RPG sometime in the 1990s as more advanced anti-tank weapons were needed. However, at least two defence manufacturing companies in Bulgaria continue to manufacture similar weapons. Bulgaria based Arsenal and Vazovski Mashinostroitelni Zavodi (VMZ) continue to produce RPG-22 like weapons and its components.

However, the markings generally seen on Bulgarian products are not in Russian, which brings the other characters in the markings under the spotlight.

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The rest of the markings seen on the weapon in Mohali read—13-86-K. According to the customary manuals, 13 is most likely a unique code number or lot number assigned to a batch of ammunition item, whereas 86 should indicate the year of the product, K in this case, is associated with the manufacturing, filling or assembly plant.

This likely puts the weapon used in Mohali to the USSR-era RPG-22, which were exported to and used in many countries and still find their way across the world, often through illegal routes and government-sponsored covert channels. These weapons have also been seen in action in Ukraine, Syria, and Afghanistan and even by the dissident Irish paramilitary groups.

Amid continuous reports of Pakistan using drones to smuggle weapons to Punjab, the possibility of the transfer of relatively low-cost weapons like the RPG-22 from the western border is highly plausible.

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