Probe busts major Munger gun racket

Ex-army man suspected of reassembling arms using parts stolen from army depots and selling them to Maoists

NEW DELHI: A former army man who traded in condemned, sometimes even fresh parts of assault rifles; a Bihar town renowned for making guns; and Maoists willing to pay up to ₹700,000 per rifle.

These are the strands of an investigation by the National Investigation Agency and the Bihar police into how at least 125 AK-47s, fabricated from parts of weapons presumably phased out or condemned by the army and dumped in its stores in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, reached Bihar’s Munger, where home foundries churning out crude guns have, over the years, worked their way up to crafting and assembling sophisticated weapons.

From Munger, they found their way into the hands of Maoists and gangsters. It is an investigation that raises questions about how the army deals with condemned weapons and who has access to them. The suspected mastermind of the racket, former armourer Purushottam Rajak, arrested in September from Jabalpur, has told interrogators that he was picked up by army officers in August on suspicion of stealing parts of AK-47 rifles from an army facility, but was let off after initial questioning when he claimed the parts found in his vehicle had been planted, investigators said.

The case was initially cracked by Bihar police in August and later handed over to NIA because of its pan-India and national security ramifications. Munger has emerged as a hub for trading of sophisticated weapons, including AK-47 assault rifles, parts of which are smuggled from arms depots and locally assembled. Munger police have already busted one such racket involving a nexus between officers of Jabalpur’s Central Ordnance Depot and local arms dealers. “Inadequacies

in record-keeping of condemned weapons also helped the accused. Some of stores where these condemned weapons were kept were not in good condition. In one case, a portion of one of the walls of a store had collapsed too, making it accessible, These claims will be verified,” said an NIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A senior Indian army officer aware of the case said Rajak smuggled spare parts from faulty weapons and at times even stole fresh spare parts that had been stocked at the depot for repair and maintenance of firearms. “He worked in tandem with those at the Ichapore gun factory (in West Bengal) and sourced some of the components from there...,” said the officer requesting anonymity. The officer said the army’s own investigation showed that Rajak could have been responsible for supplying “spare parts for over 100 weapons” which subsequently found their way to the grey market. The officer underlined that Rajak quit the army in 2008 and was employed as

a civilian at the arms depot.

Queries sent to the Indian army and the ministry of defence went unanswered. The Indian army spokesperson did not respond when asked why Rajak had been let off after being picked up in August. Investigators in NIA and Bihar police say that having been an armourer himself, Rajjak knew how to fabricate a weapon using spares from different weapons. Bihar police found the markings of different ordnance stores on some weapons recovered in Munger, “which shows that these weapons were fabricated using parts of different weapons. In all we have recovered around two dozen AK-47 rifles from different places in Munger...,” said Kundan Krishna, the police’s inspector general (operations).

According to the NIA official cited above, Rajak claims he first tried his hand at peddling guns in 2003, when he sent eight self-loading rifles to fellow armyman Mohammad Niyazur Rehman ,a native of Mirzapur Bardah village in Munger.