Firearms seized in Hooghly, 1 held

Police seized a huge cache of firearms after conducting a raid in an illegal factory situated at Bhadreswar in Hooghly on Wednesday afternoon.

A youth Girish Singh has been arrested but the kingpin Ankit Dubey had managed to flee and is still at large.

Acting on a tip off a team comprising senior police officers raided the factory and the rented house of Dubey at Angus RBS Road. Finding the police entering their factory, Dubey scaled a boundary wall and fled but his associate Singh couldn’t manage to escape.

A huge quantity of materials needed to manufacture firearms has been seized.

Praveen Tripathi, SP, Hooghly said 27 pipe guns, 17 country-made pistols and three 9 mm pistols were found in the factory. Machineries including a spring cutter were seized.

Police suspect that the accused had connection with inter-state illegal firearms trading racket. The miscreants had been making the firearms for the past few years, but local people thought that it is a factory to make different articles using iron sheets and bars.

It seems that they used to make the firearms for various groups in Jharkhand and Bihar.

Police started interrogation of the arrested person to know that till date how many guns they had made and who had given the consignment of making pipe guns. “We are also trying to find out that from where they had got the training of making fire arms. The reason being they have also made some sophisticated firearms. Unless someone underwent a proper training it is not possible to make such firearms,” said a police officer adding that they are also trying to find whether Dubey had engaged anymore people to make the firearms in his factory.