SP-rank officer got smuggled gun as ‘gift’ to favour accused

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, October 29

The Punjab Police’s Organised Crime Control Unit (OCCU) has levelled serious allegations against an SP-rank police officer, accusing him of taking a foreign-made smuggled weapon as a gift from an accused. In lieu of the gift, the SP presented the prime accused as a witness in the case, says the OCCU in its chargesheet presented in a local court on October 27 in the five-year-old weapons smuggling case.

Modus operandi of gangsters

• Gangsters trafficked illegal arms into Punjab and got these registered against arms licences of co-accused who posed as ‘buyers’
• The arms were kept with ‘buyers’ for safe-keeping and used by gangsters in illegal activities before being deposited back
• Offices of Ferozepur, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Patiala, Bathinda and Mansa district magistrate were misled using forged papers to get these registered

The police officer, Bikramjit Singh, is also a prime accused in the Behbal Kalan police firing incident of October 2015.

In the chargesheet, the OCCU alleged a large number of weapons were trafficked in an organised manner into India and then to Punjab through Bihar and UP by gangster Ranjit Singh Dupla and his associates though smugglers from Bihar and UP.

A challan has been presented against Satish Kumar of Chandigarh; Pankaj Bansal of Moga; Ranjit Singh, alias Dupla, Parampal Singh, Anantdeep Singh, Ranjit Singh, alias Guru, and Gurcharan Singh, all of Faridkot; Kulbir Singh of Bathinda, Amar Lal Setia of Abohar and Rajesh Kumar of Bareilly in UP.

The accused were using the weapons in their nefarious activities of extortion, contract killing, assault and intimidation of general public, it is alleged.

The sophisticated foreign-made weapons had higher potency than those made in India and were used by gangsters to create terror among the public. Gangster Dupla allegedly trafficked these illegal weapons into Punjab and hatched a conspiracy to get these registered against the arms licenses of his co-accused who posed as “buyers”.

The weapons were kept in the custody of these “buyers” for safe-keeping and whenever the gangsters needed to carry out their nefarious activities, they used these before depositing them back with the “buyers”.

The chargesheet alleged Chandigarh-based gun dealer Satish Kumar purchased around 50 foreign-made weapons when he was in contact with Dupla, a proclaimed offender in the case.

Some weapons were sold between Rs 9 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. During the course of investigation, 21 of these weapons were recovered from Kumar, claimed the OCCU. Bansal, a Moga car dealer, allegedly acted as a conduit in the illegal trade and gifted one of the weapons to the SP-rank police officer in Faridkot to buy his favour in the case. In lieu of the gift, Bansal was made a witness, instead of being nominated as an accused in the case, says the chargesheet.