In a huge victory for the Kolkata police, a special task force (STF) of Kolkata police arrested six persons including two Rifle Factory Ishapore (RFI) officials from the Babughat area in connection with arms being smuggled to Maoists on 7th may.
The STF seized seven revolvers, one carbine and ten rounds of ammunition from the miscreants. Kolkata Police, Deputy Commissioner, STF, stated that STF acted on a tip-off and laid a trap at the Babughat area and caught four men with arms.
Two of the miscreants, Ajay Kumar Pandey and Jayashankar Pandey were arrested by the STF from Bihar’s Nalanda District and Umesh Roy and Kartik Shaw was arrested from Ichchapur in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas.
According to the deputy commissioner, after the interrogation of Ajay and Jayashankara, they got to know about the involvement of junior work managers Sushanta Basu and Sukhda Murmur. The managers were arrested from their respective residences in the North 24 Parganas District.
The STF suspects this racket has been active since 2008 and the accused were supplying arms and ammunition to Maoists in Bihar. It is believed that these two junior officers helped to get the arms out of the rifle factory. Talking about the modus operandi of these smugglers, the officer remarked that often times the scrapped items were repaired outside the factory and then sold to the Maoists. The amount fetched for such arms in the black market is around 4 lakh. The smugglers supplied arms which were meant for the Indian army to such terror groups.
“They (the arrested) used to smuggle out parts of the arms scrapped by the rifle factory and these smugglers used to mend and sell them to Maoists in Bihar,” – the officer stated.
A large number of Insas and Slr’s were among the arms supplied to the Maoists in Bihar –
“Ajoy and Jayasankar have admitted that they had smuggled out 16 Insas rifle and several SLRs a couple of years ago and had sold them to Maoists in Bihar”.
The STF has brought charges of criminal conspiracy, The Arms act, and dealing with stolen property against the accused.