Arms seized in Munger, four held

PATNA/MUNGER: The Special Task Force (STF) on Tuesday arrested four interstate arms smugglers and seized huge cache of arms and ammunition from their possession at Tikarampur village under the Mufassil police station area in Munger district.The seized arms and ammunition included an AK-47 assault rifle, a US-made semi-automatic rifle (Springfield), a self-loading rifle (SLR), four regular pistols, four revolvers, 11 unfinished country-made pistols and around 1,000 live cartridges of different firearms and several magazines of INSAS rifle and other weapons used by the security forces. Prohibited cartridges were also seized.The four arrested were identified as Sanoj Yadav, Sanjeev Sah, Raman Kumar and Tani Sharma. They were handed over to the district police.“The smugglers had kept the firearms and ammunition in a burrow made behind a hutment. The burrow was covered with a lid, which was covered with earth,” STF sources said.“The arrested smugglers are part of the international firearms smuggling gang active in the northeast states. The US-made rifle and the AK-47 were most probably smuggled from that area only,” sources said. STF sources said the four smugglers were regular suppliers of firearms and ammunition to criminals and Maoists in Bihar. “They were being interrogated about their links in northeast India and in Bihar,” sources said.A source said STF got input a few weeks back that the gang had sophisticated firearms and ammunition and put their movement under surveillance. “Sanoj had been to jail twice for arms smuggling. His father owns a firearms shop in Nagaland,” sources said.They said criminal antecedents of the other three were being ascertained. All arrested persons belonged to Munger district.