Illegal gun factories in Bihar’s Munger that fed the criminals of Delhi-NCR big time are bleeding because of a sustained crackdown. The share of cheap killing machines in bloodshed has still spiked in the Capital. Reason? The deadly cottage industry has moved closer home!
Alarmed cops have launched a big operation, tracking local movements and scanning locations in western Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut, only 70 km from Delhi, where raw materials and largely unemployed but highly skilled labour have quietly shifted from Munger. Cops are scrambling for inter-state meetings so that nothing falls through the cracks. Initially, these units came up on Meerut’s outskirts but soon moved deeper and deeper, Mail Today has learnt.
“To evade action, illegal firearms manufacturers and dealers have set up bases in Meerut and its adjoining areas, using skilled labour and raw material brought from Munger,” said Sanjeev Yadav, Delhi’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell).
Munger and Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone were two top centres from where these guns came in bulk to Delhi-NCR. “They were home to ordnance factories even before the British came to India. The operations were later shut. Most ‘kaarigars’ moved to the illegal business. ‘Kattas’ or ‘tamanchas’ (single-shot crude handguns) slowly made room for copies of branded weapons, even sophisticated burst-firing rifles,” explained a police official. Delhi Police has busted several gangs with roots in Bihar, mainly Munger. For example, between 2012 and 2015, it registered 3,391 cases and recovered 2,585 illicit arms, mostly high quality, and 29,636 cartridges.
In 2012, cops seized 28 Munger pistols from seven gunrunners. In July 2013, two men were arrested in Delhi with 99 such weapons – one for Rs 20,000-25,000. They supplied one such consignment in NCR every month.
In June 2014, Delhi Police recovered a ‘Munger-made AK-47 rifle’, a first, 30 semi-automatic pistols and as many spare magazines, busting a plan to set up a ‘Mini Munger’ in the Capital itself because of a sustained crackdown. One ‘assault rifle’ was to fetch Rs 3 lakh. Three months later, cops recovered 20 sophisticated Munger pistols of 7.65 caliber from three men.
The script began changing soon. In February 2016, Delhi Police seized 50 country-made pistols and 50 magazines from a Meerut-based gunrunner. In December last year, a Meerut dealer was arrested in the Capital with 28 firearms. This was after he had supplied 400 pistols to places, including Delhi.
The latest indicator of the big shift came on October 9, when Delhi Police unearthed an illegal firearms manufacturing factory in Meerut and arrested five men. Cops recovered 84 semi-automatic pistols, five cartridges, 40 magazines, besides several unfinished and semi-furnished firearms.
The raw material had been brought by skilled workers in Munger. “Criminals in Delhi want ‘home delivery’. Suppliers come here, deliver consignments and collect cash. They hide consignments in false cavities created in cars. We have to track them down in border areas.
Mostly, when patrolling parties ask them to stop, they open fire to evade arrest,” DCP Yadav said. About 80 per cent murders, in which firearms have been used, involve illegal weapons, including country-made ones. “We’re interrogating those found committing crime with these arms. We have instructions to break this network,” said a senior police official.
Thousands of people are arrested every year from western UP districts including Meerut and Muzaffarnagar for manufacturing and supplying illegal firearms. “The region has urbanised rapidly and is also close to Nepal and Bangladesh where there are big markets for such weapons,” said a senior UP police official.
Agrarian castes have earned much wealth by selling farmland for realty projects. This has spiked crime and firearm sales.
“We are taking tough action. In August, we busted a factory in Meerut and recovered 400 finished and unfinished countrymade pistols,” he said. A major obstacle for the police is that the production takes place in interiors, often jungles. “And hideouts keep changing. We’re working on a consolidated database,” he said.
But Munger guns haven’t stopped coming here. In an operation in July last year, Delhi Police recovered 35 automatic pistols and 69 magazines. “To collect intelligence and break these rings, we are sending teams to areas where guns are manufactured. We are using surveillance to track movement and distribution, conducting checks and raids. We are coordinating with local police for better results,” said a senior official.
(with agency inputs)
