Post news network
BHUBANESWAR: Several gangs are engaged in gun-running in the state on a large scale. Police sources say Bihar is the epicenter of the deadly racket and guns are imported to the state from there by mafia elements and are also manufactured in Orissa with help from Bihar-based gangs.
Several workers at the ordnance factory in Munger learn the techniques of making guns and then leave the government-run entity to work for mafias engaged in gun-running, the sources told Orissa POST.
Illegal arms factories are located in Baramba and Talcher regions of Orissa, according to a former commissionerate police officer who had done some related investigations in the past.
“Mainly Mausers (pistols) and sixers (revolvers) are illegally manufactured in Baramba and Talcher,” he said. Two types of pistols are illegally manufactured in Orissa. “These are full slider pistols having nine chambers and half slider pistols having six chambers,” he said.
Police officials in Cuttack, who had arrested several illegal arms dealers in the past, said the Munger police are not doing much to check the menace. “We went to Munger and arrested several well-known illegal arms dealers. We arrested Gunjan of Bihar and Mahesh Bihari of Orissa there. But our counterparts in Munger did little,” the officials said.
The illegal arms and ammunition are sold in Cuttack as well as Bhubaneswar, Puri, Kendrapara, Dhenkanal, Angul, Jagatsinghpur, Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela. Full sliders are available at Rs 45,000 and half sliders at Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000. Arms could be easily concealed in bags and carried in trains and buses to Cuttack and other places.
A major concern for the police is that the influx of sophisticated arms might not only be arming anti-social gangs but may also be going into the hands of individuals who operate it without licence.
Police commissioner RP Sharma told Orissa POST the police is taking all possible steps to curb illegal gun-running or arms trade in the capital and adjoining areas. “The commissionerate police had in 2014 launched operation ‘Black Smoke’ in Bhubaneswar and Operation Trishul in Cuttack to check illegal supply of firearms in the twin cities,” the commissioner said.
The police were not only apprehending criminals procuring guns but also arresting middlemen selling weapons to these criminals, he asserted.
Sharma stressed that the gun-running business could not be controlled until and unless the Bihar police took a serious note of the matter.
The recent firing incidents in Bhubaneswar — between the police and the criminals on the Cuttack-Puri bypass road and the firing incident in Khandagiri in which reportedly two businessmen were shot at — have added to the public concern over the proliferation of illegal arms in the state.
