3 pirates arrested after attempted hijack of cargo ship

Kolkata: Police arrested five pirates on Monday in connection with Saturday's incident in which they had attempted to hijack a cargo ship from Bangladesh.

In the wee hours on Saturday, the pirates had attempted to hijack the cargo ship when it was passing through Sundarbans area. Acting on a tip-off, the police had conducted a raid when the pirates were about to attack the cargo ship.

There was a gun battle between the team led by Arijit Sinha, Superintendent of Baruipur police district, and the pirates. However, the accused managed to flee into the forest of Sundarbans taking advantage of darkness. The police had been searching for the accused since the day of the incident. Finally they got a breakthrough on Monday morning when they conducted a raid in one of the hideouts of the accused at Deulbari near Kultali in South 24 Parganas. The police arrested five persons and recovered three pipe guns and some rounds of ammos from the accused.

The police took them in their custody and interrogated them and came to know the whereabouts of three more of the accused and initiated a search. A senior police officer said that they are trying to find whether the accused had ever tried to commit such crimes earlier and if any criminal from outside the state was involved with them. Police will be reconstructing the entire plot and at the same time, the investigating officers are trying to get names of the persons who had supplied the firearms to them.

A police officer said that the accused are well aware of the region and they knew the routes through which they can

easily flee in case police conducted raids. The police are trying to know how they came to know the timing of when the cargo vessel would pass through the area.