A firearms-making machine recovered from a unit in Bihar’s Munger on Wednesday, November 13, 2024)
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
A Kolkata Police Special Task Force (STF), along with the investigating agencies of adjoining States, has busted fourteen illegal firearms units in Bihar and Jharkhand in the last three years. At the latest, they busted a unit in Bihar’s Munger on Wednesday (November 13, 2024) night.
According to the STF officials, 58 people had been arrested or detained from Bihar and Jharkhand in joint raids between 2022 and 2024 over their alleged links with arms-making units.
At least seven people from Bihar were arrested between September and November this year alone in joint operations by the STFs of the Bihar Police and Kolkata Police.
“The latest raid at Munger is the 14th illegal arms unit busted jointly by the Kolkata Police STF in Bihar and Jharkhand in the last three years. Whenever we develop intelligence from Kolkata, we verify and share it with the police team of the concerned State, and jointly carry out raids,” Solomon Nesakumar, Joint Commissioner of Police of the Kolkata Police STF, told The Hindu.
He said such illegal firearms manufacturing units had been supplying ammunition all over the country, with Kolkata receiving “a sizeable portion” of it.
During the raid on Wednesday, police recovered six 7 mm pistol bodies, six pistol butts and many arms-making machines from a unit in Bihar’s Munger.
Secret underground chamber
On Wednesday night, the STFs of the Kolkata Police and Bihar Police and personnel of Bihar’s Tarapur Police Station busted an illegal and improvised firearms manufacturing unit at Tarapur in Bihar’s Munger district.
During the raid, a secret underground chamber was discovered inside a house, which was allegedly built to install an improvised firearms manufacturing unit. Police recovered six 7 mm pistol bodies, six pistol butts, a lathe machine, a milling machine, a grinding and polishing machine and a large number of other tools and raw materials used in manufacturing firearms from the unit.
Police apprehended Md Monazir Hussain, 27, and Md Nasim, 38, from the house where the firearms manufacturing unit was found.
Mr. Hussain, the owner, was allegedly running the unit along with his brother-in-law Mr. Nasim and their associate Irshad Mallick under the guise of a dining plate manufacturing unit.
Police apprehended Md Monazir Hussain, 27, and Md Nasim, 38, from the house where the firearms manufacturing unit was found.
Similar raids
In a similar raid in September, five people had been detained for allegedly running an active, illegal mini gun factory in Bihar’s Bhagalpur. Police recovered 15 pieces of semifinished, improvised 7.65 mm pistol parts such as pistol body, pistol sliders, pistol grip and pistol barrels and arms manufacturing machines.
On November 9, the Kolkata Police STF arrested one person following a raid in Baithakkhana area near Sealdah in Central Kolkata, from where an arsenal of firearms and ammunition were recovered.
According to the police, the information collected in the Sealdah raid helped in busting the firearms unit in Bihar’s Munger.
Published – November 15, 2024 12:55 am IST
