Used cartridges, dummy rifle recovered from primary school
Arms, ammunition found in store room locked for four decades
LUCKNOW: Panic gripped the Narhi area of the city after over 1,400 bullet shells, used/missed cartridges, a dummy rifle and many toy rifles were recovered from a store room in a primary school in the crowded locality on Friday.
These were apparently meant for the training of NCC cadets, but education department officials so far could not find details of these items in their records, said police.
Radha Raman Singh, inspector, Hazratganj police station said these items were recovered from a store room that was locked for several years.
According to cops, education department officials said the room was locked for around 40 years and the recovery was made when labourers opened the room for cleaning purpose and found iron boxes containing the said items.
He said block education officer Archana Kumari informed the police and senior education department officials about the recovery made from the room. The labourers had started cleaning work under her supervision on Friday after being asked by a NGO that had adopted the school a few weeks ago, said Singh.
The inspector said the recovered items included 142 packets containing at least 100 used/ missed bullets of .22 bore each (approximately 14,200 used/ missed bullets), 125 used/missed bullets of 303 rifle and 83 bullet shells.
Abhay Mishra, CO, Hazratganj stated Amarkant Singh, BSA, had been informed about the recovery, after which he visited the school.
Education department officials were unable to find out how these things were kept in the storeroom.
The room was earlier used as office of block education department and remained closed after the office was shifted, he said.