Nagpur: The city police, who have tightened surveillance on criminal activities in view of the state assembly elections, were alarmed after videos surfaced on social media showing a group of youngsters wielding swords in a threatening manner. The cops, who have kicked off a drive against illegal arms and weapons in run-up to the election, swung into action, arrested three youngsters and detained two minors, and recovered six swords from them at Ajri Majri locality on the city's outskirts on Monday morning.
The cops, who are probing the motive of youngsters behind procuring the swords, feel they may have wanted to establish themselves as a gang in their area. One of the detained persons, Prakash Chatte, has a crime record at Tehsil police station. The two other arrested youngsters have been identified as Deepak Nimkar and Piyush Sakhre.
As per the preliminary interrogation, the youngsters claimed to have brought the swords from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. Police are not ruling out that the youngsters possessed the swords to settle a score.
Senior inspector Praveen Kale of Kalamna police station stated that Chatte was the first one to be arrested during the night operation and two swords were recovered from him. "Following Chatte's interrogation, the names of other accused also came to fore, who were subsequently rounded up one-by-one," said Kale who spearheaded the combing operation under the supervision of zonal DCP Niketan Kadam.
"All the posts related to the swords were deleted. The group posted the videos on social media using someone else's devices, which were tracked down to identify the perpetrators," said Kale.