Guns used by British Indian army and during B’desh liberation war smuggled out of OFB unit in Bengal

Firearms that served the British Indian army and were later used during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, parts of several types of weapons as well as INSAS and SLR rifles currently in use by the Indian army and paramilitary forces have been smuggled out of Rifle Factory Ishapore (RFI) on a truck that regularly carried garbage and scrap material out of the factory, probe by Kolkata Police has revealed.

Between Sunday night and Monday afternoon, the Special Task Force (STF) of the Kolkata Police arrested two junior works managers of RFI, Sukhada Murmu and Sushanta Basu, two contract labourers of the factory, Umesh Rai and Kartick Shaw and two Bihar-based gunrunners, Ajay Pundit and Jaishankar Pandey.

Seven firearms from the World War II and Bangladesh Liberation War era were seized from their possession. After production ended, these weapons were stored away by RFI in finished or semi-finished condition. The.38 bore Webley and Scott revolvers and the carbine seized on Monday were almost in working condition. The accused persons had earlier allegedly smuggled out 20 INSAS and SLR rifles and sold these to Maoists and criminals.

This was STF’s second operation in seven months. In September 2017, Sambhu Bhattacharjee, a junior works manager of RFI, was arrested for allegedly smuggling out parts of SLR and INSAS rifles.

Murmu, who earlier worked with Bhattacharjee in the stores department, was promoted to the rank of junior works manager a few months ago. He was in charge of disposal of both garbage and scrap material.

The factory, India’s oldest defence production unit, is located about 40 km to the north of Kolkata. It is one of the 41 factories run by the Ordnance Factory Board which functions under the Ministry of Defence.

“Weapons and weapon parts were hidden inside scrap and garbage and taken out of the factory during day. These were stolen from warehouses at night and stashed inside scrap materials and garbage kept at different locations,” a senior officer of STF said on Wednesday on condition of anonymity.

“We were surprised to find that nobody ever checked what the vehicle was actually carrying. We also found that not everybody entering or leaving the factory is properly frisked,” the officer added.

“The gang had been operating for years. They smuggled out 16 INSAS rifles and 4 SLRs. We suspect that these were sold to Maoists,” said Muralidhar Sharma, deputy commissioner of police, STF.

“To steal weapons, the contract labourers used to enter the factory by scaling the boundary wall at a particular location that can’t be seen by security guards manning the watch towers. One of the accused showed us how to scale the wall. Factory officials were also present,” Sharma added.

There was no official communication from RFI authorities on this issue on Wednesday and Ordnance Factory Board did not reply to an e-mail HT sent on Tuesday.

Several RFI officers, who did not want to be named, said discontinued weapons along with weapon parts kept aside as “scrap” were never listed. “Also, there was no proper monitoring partially owing to shortage of storekeepers,” said an officer. STF officers said they too could not find any record on materials dumped as scrap.

“Security is watertight only at the production units and stores where new weapons are kept. Even weapons kept at the RFI museum are all catalogued even though the barrels of all these weapons are drilled to make them useless,” said a senior RFI officer.

STF officers got a first-hand knowledge of the alleged security lapses when they took Umesh Rai, one of the contract labourers, to RFI on Tuesday. The accused took the officers to the first floor of a warehouse and showed the broken window from where weapons were dropped on the ground and later smuggled out. The STF team found two Webley and Scott revolvers from there.

On Monday, STF recovered .38 bore Webley and Scott revolvers and a carbine (a vintage British sub-machine gun popularly called Sten gun) from the accused persons.

“Some Webley revolvers were made by RFI before and during World War 2 to augment supplies from the mother plant in Birmingham, UK. But the ones made here did not have the Birmingham factory proof marks. Stens were also made in huge quantity for the army. These were used in war with China and in the 1971 Bangladesh War,” said a senior factory officer.

These weapons, along with hundreds more, were stored in three British- era warehouses for dacades. Some were shifted to another building around two years ago.