Patna, Mar 23 (IANS): A day after the General Railway Police (GRP) seized four unclaimed bags from the Gwalior-Barauni Express at Bihar's Siwan railway station on Wednesday, authorities found 20 kg of explosive material in it, officials said on Thursday.

As per a bomb squad official, such a high amount of explosives are capable of causing severe damage to a railway station or a train.

"We checked the nature of the explosive found in the bags. It was very powerful. We have checked a few grams of explosive which exploded like a grenade," said Bomb Squad Inspector Prassanjeet Kumar.

The bags were found placed next to the toilet in one of the train's bogies by a GRP team checking for liquor. Head Constable Shabbir Mian found four bags and enquired with passengers nearby but no one claimed them. He then took the bags to the GRP police station at the railway station and hung them on the wall.

The bag was hanged for around 4 hours before SHO Sudhir Kumar spotted them, checked them and found suspicious materials that looked to be like explosives. He immediately called his senior officers and a bomb squad arrived, put the bags in two buckets filled with water, and took them to a safe place.

The GRP officials are investigating how and where the bag came into the train and what was the motive. The train started from Madhya Pradesh's Gwalior and stopped at 35 railway stations across Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar on its way to Barauni in Begusarai district.

Officials are trying to ascertain who put the explosives on the train and at which station. The problem that arises is some of its stops are small stations which do not have scanning machines, and it would be easy for a person to smuggle the explosive inside.

On June 17, 2021, a parcel, which came from Sikandarabad in a parcel compartment of a train, exploded at a platform of Darbhanga railway station.