Two Tripura youths arrested with 100 live bullets sent to police remand

A local court in North Tripura’s Dharmanagar on Wednesday remanded two youths to three days of police custody who were arrested early in the day with 100 live rounds of bullets while traveling back to Agartala through Deogarh Express.Police said the accused youths have been identified as Dipankar Sen (32) and Prasenjit Das (25), residents of the bordering village Madhupur in Sepahijala district. The accused confessed that they went to Dimapur of Nagaland two days ago to procure the bullets through a local contact. Accordingly, they delivered the consignment of .22 bullets against payment.“It is revealed that the bullets were bought for criminal acts in Tripura, as according to the accused youths, there is a sizable number of unauthorized firearms in the state but bullets are scarce. It is still unclear where those bullets will be used and for what purpose. However, interrogation is going on to unearth the entire chain,” said a senior officer of the investigation team.The recovery of live bullets in Dharmanagar Railway Station in North Tripura along Assam border amid communal tension at Kadamtala posed questions about the law and order situation in the state. With the unrest in Bangladesh over the past two months, criminal activities on the Indo-Bangladesh border have increased manifold including smuggling.According to the report, when the train halted at Dharmanagar Railway en route to Agartala, Government Railway Police (GRP) had gone for a routine inspection. During the inspection, the jawans observed two individuals behaving suspiciously, and they were detained.“During the search, 100 live rounds of .22 caliber bullets were recovered from their possession,” the officer mentioned, adding that arms and ammunition had been entering Tripura by train from Munger, Myanmar through Dimapur and Moreh.