PATNA: A team of Special Task Force (STF), along with Khagaria district police personnel in Bihar, seized a consignment of 199 live cartridges of 7.65mm, four country-made semi-automatic pistols and three extra magazines on Tuesday night which were on way to be supplied to West Bengal.
There is an assembly election scheduled to take place in West Bengal very soon.
The STF also nabbed one Mohammad Abu Salim, a Malda-based arms smuggler who was to take the entire consignment to the neighbouring state.
Besides Abu, STF also arrested Pintu Yadav and Roushan Kumar who had brought the consignment to Khagaria from Munger for final delivery to Abu. Four cell phones, a bike and Rs 1,900 were also seized from arrested persons. Pintu and Roushan are natives of Khagaria town.
When asked, Khagaria SP Amitesh Kumar told TOI over phone that the arrest and seizure took place from a nearby bus stand located under Mufassil police station in the district.
Kumar said that besides being consignment meant to be supplied to election-bound West Bengal, another important factor is that arms smugglers were using barter-system in which they were paying by supplying narcotics instead of money.
“I have not heard about such a system of arms smuggling till now. This is first of its kind case which has surfaced in Khagaria,” he said.
Kumar said that arms smugglers from West Bengal already supplied narcotics to arms manufacturers in Munger for the consignment. “This surfaced in the trio's interrogation,” he said.
“After firearms were completely manufactured and ready for supply, they were brought to Khagaria from Munger for final delivery,” he added.
The SP said that interrogation is going on to know if these arms and ammunition were being procured in view of state assembly election in West Bengal or not.
In another operation of the day, a separate STF team in a joint operation with district police busted a mini gun-factory deep inside jungles of Rishikund under Bariyarpur police station area in Munger.
Munger SP Manavjt Singh Dhillon said Shivam Kumar, Mohan Paswan, Mohammad Mahboob Alam and Mohammad Tabrez were arrested.
He said five partially manufactured pistols, five barrels, six magazines, 53 different kinds of equipment, a pickup auto-rickshaw and two cellphones were seized.