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Punjab Police bust inter-State arms racket

A close look: Punjab Director General of PoliceP. S. Gill (right) takes a look at fake arms, recovered from an inter-State gang, in Chandigarh on Monday.

CHANDIGARH: The Punjab Police claim to have busted an inter-State gang engaged in selling weapons made in illegal factories of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Fifteen persons, including one woman, have been arrested and 270 arms, besides 6,000 cartridges, recovered.

State Police chief P. S. Gill announced on Monday that while the Mansa district police had registered a case, sleuths were investigating leads which suggested that the gang also supplied arms to suspected Maoist elements and was connected with some other terror groups.

Mr. Gill said Mahesh Kumar, owner of India Gun House in Mansa, along with Arvinder Singh Pappu of Ludhiana, Anil Middha alias Ruby, owner of Hindustan Gun House in Sirsa, and Nand Kishore, owner of Tammana Armoury, and a few other persons had set up the gang. The modus operandi was to buy revolvers/pistols for Rs.35,000 apiece and sell them for Rs.1 lakh apiece after forging documents.

Links with Maoists

Mr Gill said the gang had succeeded in selling 4,000 illegal weapons in Punjab and other States. The kingpin of the gang, Anil Middha, had close links with Maoists in Bihar through Mahesh Kumar, who ran an illegal arms factory in Firozabad, which was unearthed by Mansa Police. Middha had six vehicles that were specially altered to supply cartridges and smuggle weapons, said Mr. Gill.

The Police Chief pointed out that one of the accused, Harkamaljit Singh Bindra, owner of Avtar Singh Bindra Gun House in Amritsar, was arrested last year by Mansa Police for selling three arms by preparing fake license to a hardcore terrorist.

He said a number of illegal arms recovered had been found from various police stations in different districts as case properties. After a thorough verification of arms and ammunition dealers' records, a huge quantity of illegal arms is expected to be recovered, he stated, adding that some inputs regarding some police personnel's connivance with arms dealers are being investigated.

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