South 24 Parganas police on Wednesday unearthed a large fire-arms factory which was successfully operating barely 100 km away from Kolkata.
According to the police, the factory is one of the biggest among those which have been uncovered in recent past. Police arrested five people in connection with this case, among those three were resident of Munger.
The people from Bihar’s Munger – which is infamous for its firearms production – had come to South 24 Parganas to make guns and cartridges for anti-socials here.
The investigators, after getting a tip-off from a source, barged into the factory on Tuesday night and recovered 101 fire weapons including – 95 one shot guns, two 9mm pistols, four single barrel long arm guns, pipe guns, 2 kg of explosives, 54 rounds of bullets and cartridges and many other small and big-sized gun. “We conducted a raid at a place called Nayabasti in South 24 Parganas under the jurisdiction of Rabindranagar Police station. Five persons were arrested, out of which three were natives of Munger, in Bihar,” said Sunil Choudhury, Superintendent of police (SP), South 24 Parganas.
The kingpin, Aftab Hossein was the owner of the 1,000 square foot house at Nayabasti where the factory was running for the last five years. The locals alleged that police should have acted earlier, as most the arms makers have been living here for long five years.
Apart from Aftab, Md Salim, Md Aslam and Md Atesan – three were brought from Munger to carry out the assignments to make 500 fire arms per week. Aftab could not waste much time to sell those arms in South and North 24 Parganas, and some of them were sent to Bihar as well. “We have started a case. It is now clear that three Munger men were brought in Kolkata to run the business. Aftab also sent the consignment to Kolkata’s Garden Reach and Metiabruz area,” an investigating officer said.
However, the investigators are now busy finding the links between Bihar and Kolkata, as there might have been some middleman who supplied skilled arms makers to Aftab. “We are grilling Aftab. He has divulged some important information related to this case. But we can not disclose those for the sake of investigation,” said SP South 24 Parganas.