The Hindu : Gang involved in guns, drugs busted

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 29, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Gang involved in guns, drugs busted

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 28. A gang, allegedly involved in financing gun-running through drug deals and operating from a gun house at Agra in Uttar Pradesh, has been busted by the Narcotics and Crime Prevention Cell of the Delhi police. Six persons have been arrested in this connection and several foreign and country-made weapons have been recovered.

The Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime), Sudhir Yadav, told media persons that after following leads for over a month, a team of Narcotics Cell arrested three persons from Sarai Kale Khan bus stand in South Delhi on February 25. They were identified as Devinder, Rajiv Dixit and Lalit Sharma, all residents of Agra in U.P. Five country-made revolvers of .315-bore, two of .32-bore, 25 live cartridges of .32-bore and 500 gm heroin were recovered from them.

At their instance, a police team went to Agra and arrested three more with the help of U.P. police on February 27 evening. The accused, identified as Mohit Khanna, Pankaj Sharma and Krishan Kumar, all Agra residents, were operating from Navbharat Shastralaya -- a gun house which was first given licence in 1948. However, the licence had not been renewed since 1999. The police recovered six single barrel guns, a double barrel gun, two foreign-made revolvers and 23 live cartridges from there. They suspect that the gang could be in possession of more sophisticated weapons, including the automatic and semi-automatic ones.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (Narcotics Cell), D. L. Kashyap, said the gang had procured imported .32-bore revolvers called "Darra" from Jammu and Kashmir and sold them to criminals in Haryana, Delhi and U.P. "The possibility of the gang having links with extremists is being investigated. We have managed to identify their contact in Jammu and Kashmir," he said. The gang has allegedly confessed to having disposed of about half-a-dozen "Darra" revolvers, but the police suspect that the number could be much more. "The gang has been indulging in gun-running for more than five years," said Mr. Kashyap.

Investigations are now on to unearth the entire chain of drug deals being used to finance the gun-running activities.

Apart from procuring guns from Jammu and Kashmir, the gang also used to make country-made firearms by assembling various discarded parts of the guns which unsuspecting people used to bring to them for repairs. Since all of them had worked with various gun houses, they were able to put together country-made arms with good finish and foreign labels.

The gang has allegedly confessed to having supplied guns used in at least five cases in the past couple of years. They had supplied guns used in killing a criminal outside Gurgaon court in December 2003. The accused in the murder of a professor of Shradhanand College on December 12, 2002, had also procured gun from them. A couple of other gangs had bought guns from this gang, the police said.

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