Bhubaneswar: Five people were arrested in Bhubaneswar as an inter-state arms racket was busted Friday, police said.
Acting on a tip-off, personnel of the Airport police station conducted a raid in the Pokhariput area and made the arrests, Police Commissioner S Dev Datta Singh.
Six illegal firearms were seized from them, he said.
Those arrested were identified as Prabin Kumar Singh (40), Raghvendra Singh (28), Abhishek Rajput (31), Indrajit Singh (38), and Sk Sakil (28), he added.
Three of them are from Balia district in UP, one from Bhind district of MP, and another from Salepur in Cuttack, Singh said.
“We have seized four 7.65 mm semi-automatic pistols, one six-round revolver, a single-shot weapon, 18 rounds of live ammunition, a car and five mobile phones,” he said.
Prabin had been staying on rent in the Jatni Gate area of the city for the last two months. He is an arms smuggler, sourcing illegal firearms from other states, the commissioner said.
He said Sakil was present at the spot to procure a firearm from the gang when the police caught them.
“Efforts are being made to crack both backwards and forward linkages of the gang,” he said.
PTI