BLACKSBURG -- A Virginia Tech student charged with planting a homemade bomb in someone's apartment and then reporting that the second person was manufacturing explosives waived a preliminary hearing Thursday.

Janaka Nuwan Kumara Siriwardena, 21, of Sterling was charged in June with manufacturing an explosive device, burglary and possession of a controlled substance, all felonies, and making a false police report, a misdemeanor.

On Thursday afternoon in Montgomery County General District Court in Blacksburg, Siriwardena pleaded not guilty but agreed there was enough evidence for a judge to certify the three felony charges to a grand jury.

The grand jury, which next meets in January, will decide whether Siriwardena should face a trial in circuit court.

District Court Judge Gino Williams convicted Siriwardena of making a false police report, fined him $100 and sentenced him to 30 days in jail, all suspended. Defense attorney Jimmy Turk said he will appeal the conviction.

According to a search warrant filed in June, someone told a police officer that he had been in an Orchard Street apartment and seen a person pour what he described as gunpowder into a cylindrical object like a pipe.

He told the officer that the person then put BBs into the device and capped both ends before saying, "This is gonna be fun."

The informant told the officer that he saw other pipelike items, powder and BBs in the apartment, according to the warrant.

Blacksburg police, the Virginia State Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched the apartment early the morning of June 22 and found an explosive device containing gunpowder and ball bearings, police said then.

No one was injured and the device was rendered safe by the state police bomb squad.

A substance believed to be cocaine was also found in the apartment, police said.

After interviewing the people who live in the apartment, police determined the bomb and the cocaine had been planted.

Siriwardena was arrested and then released on $25,000 bond.