BBA student from Jharkhand held for gunrunning in Bhubaneswar

BHUBANESWAR: The special task force (STF) of the state crime branch on Monday arrested two persons, including a student of bachelor of business administration (BBA), for allegedly dealing in illegal firearms here.
The STF seized three 7.65mm sophisticated automatic pistols, magazines and bullets from the 21-year-old student who studies in a private college here, and his associate Suresh Kumar Panigrahi, 24.
The student, who belongs to West Singhbhum in Jharkhand, has been staying in Bhubaneswar for the past two years. The STF strongly suspects that the student and Panigrahi are members of an interstate firearms racket.
The STF said the three seized pistols were manufactured in the domestic market, either in Odisha, Bihar, West Bengal or Jharkhand, and given a 'made in Italy' tag to mislead clients. The total cost of the three pistols would be around Rs 3.60 lakh in the black market, said an STF source.
The STF is yet to ascertain the place from where the accused procured the illegal arms. "We are focussing our probe on three aspects - source of the firearms and ammunition, crime syndicate of the accused, and the clients who received the illegal firearms," STF DIG Jay Narayan Pankaj said. The STF has decided to take the accused in remand for further interrogation.
The probe agency found that the 22 bullets seized bore a stamp that is used by the Centre-run ammunition factory at Khadki in Pune. "We are verifying if the stamp found on the seized bullets is original and whether the bullets were manufactured by the Khadki ammunition factory," Pankaj said.
An anti-Maoist operation by security forces in Malkangiri district recently led to the recovery of a huge cache of firearms that were also manufactured in different Centre-owned ordnance factories. The cops are trying to find out the source of the firearms.