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Bihar mafia rents out Kalashnikovs to UP goons, says Home Secretary

Weapons are smuggled from Nepal to Bihar and then to Uttar Pradesh

Lucknow: The Bihar mafia is renting out automatic rifles, including the AK-47, to criminals in Uttar Pradesh in order to make easy money, a senior Uttar Pradesh official said on Wednesday.

Principal Secretary (Home) Alok Sinha said here that based on intelligence inputs, the State police was sure that mafia groups operating in Bihar had adopted this strategy to make easy money.

On the use of AK series rifles in recent murders including that of BJP legislator Krishnanand Rai and self-proclaimed `Sant' Gyaneshwar, Mr Sinha said the Director General of Police (DGP) has told him that AK series weapons were being smuggled from Nepal to Bihar and then to Uttar Pradesh, where they were offered for hire.

He added that the police had taken the issue seriously and was drawing a strategy to check this practice.

The Special Task Forcer (STF) of the State police, meanwhile, claimed that the mafia dons did not visit Nepal to buy the weapons but instead engaged people for the task. ``The people engaged for the job are shabbily dressed and frail, pretending to be poor, so that they do not raise suspicion...they do not even carry the required amount for the purchase. Hawala transactions take care of that.''

The police have tightened patrolling along the State's borders but are yet to plug all porous points.

Officials regret that they do not have high-powered wireless sets or enough vehicles for effective surveillance on the State's borders. -- UNI

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