Arms licence racket: 7 held are from influential families

Seven of those arrested in connection with an arms licences racket are influential people from Udaipur, police said on Saturday.

Rajasthan anti-terrorist squad busted the racket on Monday following raids in 14 districts while arrests were made on Thursday night.

All the accused belong to well off families and are prominent faces in the society, ATS Udaipur in-charge Ranu Sharma said. Tens others, still under interrogation, are businessmen and property dealers.

The list of arrested people from the city include Hasan Paliwala (37) of Ambaogarh, an industrialist and owner of a mall, Vikas Suhalka (35), Goverdhan Vilas, Ravi Kant Tripathi (40) a veteran member of a renowned community group, Paras Bolia (40), Sanjay Talesra (37), Sumit Bhandari (40), Intekhab Alam (37), Jaishanakar Rai (49) and Deepak Kumar Parihar (35), Sharma said.

Initially, 20 weapons and arm licences were seized by the ATS from 13 people in Udaipur and later as the investigation moved ahead the number of the weapons reached to 30 but the identity of the suspects were kept hidden as they were under questioning.

Apart from that similar raids at some of the areas at Chittorgarh was conducted by ATS with the help of local police during which four weapons and two forged arms licences were seized on Friday but no arrest was made, Sharma said.

The first raid in this connection was conducted on the premises of Wali Mohammad and Sons, an arms shop at Ajmer from where a man and his son were arrested and information about others involved in the racket came to light during their interrogation. Later, ATS conducted series of raids at various places on Monday.

During the investigation, it was found that the inter-state racket operates mainly in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. The people involved in it use to provide forged arms licences against huge amounts of money and also provide them weapons.

7 ARRESTED IN UDAIPUR CONNECTION WITH AN ARMS LICENCES RACKET BELONG TO WELL OFF FAMILIES AND ARE PROMINENT

FACES IN THE SOCIETY