Two gelatin sticks found along PM Modi's Bengaluru convoy route to Art of Living: what is confirmed and what police are still probing

On Sunday, May 10, 2026, Bengaluru police recovered two gelatin sticks in a small bag dumped near a compound wall on the route a Prime Minister Narendra Modi convoy was due to use later in the day, prompting a security scare on the city's southern outskirts. Multiple Indian outlets confirmed that the explosive material was found before the convoy passed, that a 40-year-old man named Lohith is in custody after making an earlier threat call to a city police station, and that the prime minister's Art of Living Foundation programme proceeded as scheduled. This is an early-reporting situation; specific motives, links, and even some operational details remain under investigation.

Developing-story note: some details below come from police briefings and wire reports and are not yet locked into a court record. Where the public account is partial, items are labelled confirmed, reported, or unverified in line.

What was confirmed at the scene

Confirmed. A police constable identified as Jagadeesh, deployed alongside an Anti-Sabotage Check Team at the Vaddarahalli gate, spotted a small cover or bag near a compound wall along the route to the Art of Living International Centre. Two gelatin sticks were recovered from the bag at roughly 10.30 a.m. IST during routine pre-arrival sweeps, according to the Deccan Chronicle. Earlier reports cited by Times of India put the recovery closer to 9.45 a.m. IST; the slight time variance is normal in fast-moving sweep operations and reflects when the find was logged versus when seniors briefed press.

Confirmed. The location is on the Thathaguni–Kaggalipura stretch on the southern edge of the city, along National Highway 948 and broadly close to Kuppareddy Kere (a small lake), roughly 2 to 3 kilometres from the Art of Living campus. Kaggalipura police seized the material and registered a First Information Report (FIR) under the Explosives Act. Per ABP Live, citing the Deputy Inspector General of Police, Central Range, Bengaluru, the find came up during routine security checks ahead of the PM's arrival and was disclosed publicly only after he had begun his programme.

Reported. No detonators were recovered with the gelatin sticks, Times of India noted on the basis of officer briefings. That detail matters for the threat assessment: gelatin sticks without detonators are dangerous to handle but not a ready-to-detonate device. Investigators have not yet given a public chemical-yield reading or weight estimate, and Newsorga is treating any such figures circulating on social media as unverified for now.

The threat call and the man in custody

Confirmed. Around 7 a.m. IST, an anonymous caller telephoned Koramangala police station warning of possible blasts near HAL Airport and the Art of Living centre. Security teams swept both locations after the call. Nothing was found at HAL Airport at that stage; the gelatin sticks were recovered at the AOL-route location later that morning.

Confirmed. Lohith, a 40-year-old man (one outlet reports him as 42, an age discrepancy not yet resolved publicly), was apprehended near Koramangala off Bannerghatta Road. Senior officers, including a Deputy Commissioner of Police, are questioning him; his parents have also been called in for questioning, per News24.

Reported. Police have described the suspect as mentally unsound, citing prior episodes during VIP visits to the city when similar threat calls were made and he was released after evaluation. Officials have specifically said this case is being treated more seriously than previous calls because actual explosive material was recovered. Whether the threat call and the gelatin sticks are part of a single planned act or a coincidence of two separate incidents on the same morning is not yet established—police have explicitly said they are trying to establish connections.

Where this happened: the geography matters

The Art of Living International Centre, founded by spiritual teacher Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, sits on a sprawling campus on Kanakapura Road outside the Bengaluru city limits, in the wider Bengaluru South rural belt that includes Thathaguni, Kaggalipura and Vaddarahalli. The route from central Bengaluru to the campus runs through National Highway 948, passing low-density built-up zones, several quarry sites, and stretches of compound wall belonging to private estates and farms.

That topography is one reason investigators say they are still examining whether the recovered sticks were deliberately placed as part of an act of intimidation or were discarded inputs from local quarrying activity. Gelatin sticks are widely used in stone quarrying across Karnataka's peri-urban belt; finding loose sticks in the area is not unprecedented, but finding them near a VIP convoy route on the morning of a national event is a separate analytical category.

Why Modi was in Bengaluru: Art of Living's 45th anniversary

Modi's programme was tied to the 45th anniversary of the Art of Living Foundation, founded in 1981 by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. The PM inaugurated a new meditation hall, the Dhyan Mandir, at the campus. He praised the Foundation's tribal-uplift programmes and mental-health work for prison inmates, called for natural farming and environmental conservation, and used the line that ecology and economy cannot be separated, framing Bengaluru as both a technology hub and a centre of India's spiritual and cultural consciousness.

On X (formerly Twitter), Modi later posted that he had taken part in the celebrations and inaugurated the Dhyan Mandir, complimenting Art of Living for its rich service to society. The address was substantive and content-heavy rather than crisis-flavoured, which is itself a deliberate signal: Indian VIP security doctrine generally treats public unflappability as part of containing the news cycle once a threat is neutralised.

Investigation angles still open

Police are publicly working four hypotheses, none yet conclusive. First, that the threat caller (Lohith) and the person who placed the sticks are the same individual, with the call as a self-incrimination signal. Second, that the threat caller and the planter are different people, and that an attention-prone caller's separate confession may have inadvertently surfaced a real plot by an unrelated actor. Third, that the gelatin sticks are stray quarrying material that happened to be near the route on a sensitive day. Fourth, that the find is connected to groups opposed to the Art of Living organisation—a thinly drawn line that investigators have flagged but not substantiated.

Each angle has different evidentiary needs. Hypothesis one or two depends on call detail records (CDR), location pings, and whether forensic comparison ties Lohith's possession or movements to the bag. Hypothesis three depends on chemical analysis of the sticks and on whether the manufacturer's lot matches a licensed local quarry's records. Hypothesis four would require digital intelligence: chats, online writings, or organisational links that explicitly target the AOL event, which police have not so far publicly produced.

Mental health and the politics of the 'lone caller' framing

The mentally unsound description applied to Lohith deserves careful reading. In Indian policing, the phrase is sometimes a quick way to defuse a threat call that turns out to be a hoax; it can also be a real clinical assessment that nonetheless coexists with a separate physical act of placing explosive material. The two are not mutually exclusive, and treating a recovery of actual gelatin sticks as a psychological-distress story alone risks under-reading the case.

If formal forensic and prosecutorial scrutiny ultimately confirms a single-actor incident with limited capability, that conclusion will need to be paired with an honest review of why Lohith was released after earlier threat calls during VIP visits. Repeated diversions of police bandwidth by the same caller, in a city that hosts frequent national-level events, is itself a system failure that the Karnataka police hierarchy will likely be asked about in the days ahead.

What gelatin sticks are and why their recovery still matters

Gelatin sticks are nitroglycerine-based commercial explosives, sold in waxed paper cartridges, used in stone quarrying, mining and some construction blasting. They typically need a detonator and a triggering device—either an electric blasting cap or a non-electric initiator and shock tube—to function as a weapon. Recovered sticks without a detonator do not constitute a deployable device; they are still classified as explosive substances under the Explosives Act, 1884 and the Explosive Substances Act, 1908, which is why an FIR has been registered.

The seriousness of any prosecution will hinge on possession, placement, and intent. Possession alone—if traced to a licensed quarry holder, for example—can be a regulatory offence; deliberate placement near a convoy route reads as intent to cause panic or harm, which carries far heavier penalties under both the explosives statutes and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions on terror-adjacent and mischief-causing offences.

The security choreography that worked

From a procedural standpoint, the Special Protection Group (SPG)—which protects the prime minister—operates through a layered system of route reconnaissance, anti-sabotage sweeps by state police, and inner-cordon controls staffed by SPG personnel. The fact that a routine Anti-Sabotage Check Team sweep at Vaddarahalli gate flagged the bag rather than a chance discovery during the convoy's passage is precisely how the doctrine is designed to work: find-before-pass, isolate-then-defuse, prosecute-after-publish.

That the program continued without re-routing also reflects a deliberate choice. Once the find was secured and the suspect was detained, a visible diversion or cancellation could amplify panic and reward intimidation tactics. Indian VIP security has taken that view consistently across earlier security scares involving prime ministerial movements and major dignitary events.

What to watch in the next 48–72 hours

Three concrete signals will tell readers whether this case settles into a low-grade hoax-plus-stray-explosives narrative or escalates into something larger. First, whether the forensic lab at CFSL or the state-level facility links the sticks to a specific manufacturer, batch, and licensed user—every legally produced explosive in India carries traceability requirements. Second, whether police upgrade Lohith's status from questioning to formal arrest with charges under the explosives statutes and serve a remand application, which would be the legal bridge from a custody hold to a prosecutorial track.

Third, whether any organised angle surfaces—co-accused, conspiracy charges, or invocation of national-security statutes—or whether the case stays as a single-actor matter. State politics will read the file too: Karnataka's ruling coalition and the opposition both have incentive to frame the find around competence and accountability, and the Bengaluru Police Commissioner's public stance over the next briefings will set the template.

Bottom line

Two gelatin sticks were recovered along a route the Prime Minister of India's convoy used in Bengaluru on May 10, 2026, hours before he addressed the Art of Living anniversary. A man with a documented pattern of threat calls during VIP visits is in custody, the explosive material lacked detonators, and the program went ahead. Investigators are openly operating with multiple hypotheses, including stray quarrying material, a single-actor distress incident, and a deliberately placed intimidation device. The next clean read on this case will not come from political reactions but from forensic chain-of-custody, a remand application, and what the DCP's next briefing puts on the public record.