Delhi Police seized 25 rifles and 5,975 cartridges during its raids at a gun house in Etah district of Uttar Pradesh as part of its probe into alleged pilferage of legitimate firearms and ammunitions to criminals.
On March 22, Special Cell had busted a gang involved in largescale diversion and illegal supply of legitimate factory-made weapons to criminals.
The accused identified as Ashok Singh (62), Rakesh Sharma (44) and Ajay Sharma (49) were arrested by the Delhi Police.
1,800 cartridges of 7.65 mm bore, 0.22 mm bore and 0.315 mm bore along with the factory-built SBBL DBBL shot guns being smuggled into Delhi were recovered from them.
After registration of a case and obtaining police custody of the arrested accused, detailed investigations were started to understand the syndicate which was pilfering legitimate firearms and ammunitions by abusing the existing loopholes in the system.
The key accused Ashok Singh was taken to Etah for verifying the stocks being maintained at his licensed arms dealership.
The process of verification of available physical stock has led to the seizure of a further 1,553 live cartridges and one 12 bore DBBL shotgun which were found without valid papers.
On the spot investigations revealed that accused Ashok Singh had purchased a huge number of cartridges and a shotgun in the name of another local arms dealer without any authorisation.
The records showed huge manipulations as a large number of entries were shown in the 'purchase' column which were not being corroborated with either the 'sale' column or with the available stock records.
Several arms dealers of Etah, which have been reflected in the records of Ashok Gun House, have come under the scanner.
"One such dealer namely JP Gun House, who was shown to have sold arms and ammunitions to accused Ashok Singh, was checked and was found to be holding a large number of arms and ammunitions without valid documents/license.
"A total of 25 rifles of 0.315 mm bore and 5,975 cartridges of various bores were found kept without valid papers," said DCP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Kumar Yadav.
