AK-47 smuggler remanded in four-day police custody

PATNA: Arms smuggler Manzar Alam on Friday was remanded to four-day police custody by a Munger court for interrogation into AK-47 assault rifles’ smuggling from Central Ordnance Depot at Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh to Munger.
Alam was arrested from Buddha Colony police station area in Patna on October 8. He was living in a lodge with a changed name. A country-made semi-automatic pistol and some live cartridges were also seized from his possession.

Twenty AK-47 rifles and more than 500 spare parts smuggled from Jabalpur COD have so far been recovered from Munger since August 29. The Union ministry of home affairs (MHA) on October 5 gave permission to National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take up the case.

Fifteen arms smugglers, including Alam, have been arrested in Bihar while Jabalpur police arrested four accused, including COD storekeeper Suresh Thakur and Army’s retired armourer Purushottam Rajak.

According to police, Alam is the only arms smuggler who had moved out of Munger with the AK-47s to sell these to Maoists and criminals.

Munger SP Baburam said Alam is a hardcore arms smuggler. He is suspected to have smuggled the assault rifles even to Jharkhand, SP said.

“Police hope to get vital information from Alam about the AK-47 buyers in and outside Bihar,” the SP said.

He said another important link in the smuggling racket, Irfan, had already been arrested. “Irfan also knows about those who bought the assault rifles in Bihar,” he said.

Baburam said Alam knows well how to handle police interrogation as he has been into this field for more than two decades. “He had been to jail for arms smuggling on many occasions. It was in 1997 when he sent to jail for the first time,” Baburam said.

Alam was also wanted in a case lodged with Jakkanpur police station in Patna in April 2014 after fire arms ammunition, including those used in AK-47s, were recovered from a fuel tank of an Ambassador car.