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Illegal arms trade detected

Correspondent

West Bengal youth arrested

CUTTACK: The Cuttack police, in a major breakthrough on Tuesday, unearthed an inter-State illegal arms trade when it arrested a 28-year-old youth from West Bengal trying to sneak into the city with a huge cache of arms and arsenal. This achievement of Cuttack police came just a day after apprehending an Andhra Pradesh paddy trader with over Rs 2 lakh fake currency notes on Monday.

The arms dealer, identified as one Shakeel Ahmed from Wazirpur Road near Kolkata was under police scanner for over a month. "As he arrived in the city this morning by train from Kolkota, a waiting police team intercepted him near Station Bazaar area where he was trying to board an auto-rickshaw. The police found seven Mousers (sophisticated pistols), as many magazines, a single-shot country-made pistol attached with silencer and 28 rounds of live cartridges wrapped in papers inside an airbag", said Cuttack SP Soumendra Priyadarshi.

"This is for the first time we have unearthed an illegal arms consignment to the city sourced from West Bengal, Priyadarshi said. “We were of the belief that illegal arms were always routed into the State from Bihar only. But it was proved wrong after Tuesday’s haul,” he added saying, iIllegal arms manufacturing units must be operating in West Bengal also".

Malgodown police station inspector P K Rath, who was instrumental in arresting the AP trader on Monday and WB arms supplier on Tuesday, said investigations were now on to trace the customers who had placed the orders for these sophisticated illegal arms. “Demand for these arsenal must have come from kingpins and hardcore criminals as brandishing a Mouser is considered to be a status symbol and one-upmanship among the anti-socials,” Rath claims. A Mouser with loaded magazine costs around Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 in open market, he says.

Although the recent developments demand us to be more alert and vigilant, the situation was not alarming, Priyadarshi said adding that preliminary investigations revealed that the arms supplier had visited the city on three previous occasions and had supplied eight Mousers to different customers.

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