Kannada actor, 3 others held as police bust arms racket

BENGALURU: A one-film hero from Sandalwood and his associate have been arrested in east Bengaluru while they were delivering a consignment of one 7.65mm country-made pistol and 10 rounds of live bullets to the aide of a financier. The financier, an accused in a currency conversion racket, and his associate have also been taken into custody.

Jagadish S Hosamath alias Jaguar Jaggi, 31, hero of a Kannada movie, ironically titled 'Sarkar: The Bullet', released in March, claimed he's innocent and was only delivering a packet, whose contents he did not know, on request from a friend.

P olice later recovered one more 7.65 mm pistol and 11 rounds of live bullets from the accused, a resi dent of Ganeshpet in Hubballi. The three others arrested in the case are Jaggi's friend, Mohammed Nizam, 25, of HAL; Syed Sameer, 32, a financier from K Narayanapura and his associate BG Satish Kumar, 44, of New Thippasandra.

K othanur police had seized Rs 1.98 crore demonetized currency from the flat of Syed Sameer, a resident of K Narayanapura. Syed had obtained anticipatory bail in the case. Police said Syed had collected over Rs 3.5 crore demonetised currency from several business men promising new notes. When the businessmen began demanding that he return their money and threatened him with dire consequences, Syed planned to procure pistols for personal safety and approached his contacts for the same.

Nizam and Jaggi were arrested on October 23 from HAL area when they were waiting for Satish to hand over a pistol. On information provided by them, police picked up Syed and Sathish and recovered one more pistol from them. The accused are in judicial custody.

They have procure arms from Munna in Dharwad. Syed paid Rs 4 lakh to Nizam for two pistols and 21 rounds of bullets. They paid Rs 2.3 lakh to Munna and pocketed the rest as commission. The weapons were traced to Varanasi.