Armed & dangerous: Musclemen of UP and their illegal firepower

The use of sophisticated weapons by the criminals who gunned down eight policemen on Thursday night has again brought to fore the disturbing trend of outlaws using automated weapons, including AK 47 and carbine. Though the police are waiting for forensic report, sources on ground confirm the bullet casing of AK-47 was recovered from the encounter spot in Bikru village of Kanpur.
While gangs in western Uttar Pradesh relied heavily on country made weapons, their counterparts in eastern part preferred sophistication. It is believed that AK-47 gradually made its way into the hands of gangsters through the 90s.
It was in the mid=90s when gangster Shiv Prakash Shukla terror kept law enforcing agencies on its toes. It is believed that Shukla carried out several assassinations through AK 47 when most of even the police department had not seen it.
Senior police officials who have closely followed Shukla's rise to one of the most wanted gangsters, claim AK-47 made its way to UP in the hands of Shukla through his close associate and dreaded criminal Suraj Bhan in Bihar.
"Use of AK-47 was limited till the Purulia drop incident which saw pilferage of the highly automated weapon to several criminals of Bihar," DIG Bareilly Rajesh Pandey who was with STF in the late 90s told TOI. He was also part of the team which killed Shukla in an encounter in
The Purulia arms drop happened on December 17, 1995 when a consignment of several hundred Soviet made AK-47, a million rounds of ammunition, hand grenade and rocket launchers were dropped from an Antonov An-26 aircraft on four villages of Purulia district of West Bengal.
"Suraj Bhan had sent his men to fish out 14 of those dropped rifles from the bottom of a pond.
He had then abducted a CRPF armourer from Patna to fix the rifle and make it ready for use. Shukla had managed to secure some AK-47 rifles from Suraj Bhan," DIG Pandey said.