Weapons, ammunition meant for shooters find way to market
Aman Sood
Tribune News Service
Patiala, March 3
A large number of cartridges “meant for players participating in shooting events” have reached gangsters in northern states. The cartridges were recently recovered from some gangsters.
‘SHOOTERS COMPETE TO IMPORT WEAPONS’
It is an open secret that hundreds of shooters, a majority from UP and Bihar, compete only to import weapons and bullets, and sell the same only to import more again.
Shooters in fray for the sport in the country are directly in touch with gun houses and they sell ammunition to them to make a quick buck, not knowing that the gun house owners are directly selling the same to gangsters without maintaining any record of the sold ammunition.
Sources in the police said in the case related to the recently arrested ‘A’ category gangster Sukhpreet Singh, alias Budha, the Punjab Police recovered 36 weapons during raids in the Ferozepur range and adjoining states of Haryana and Rajasthan following which several gun house dealers had been booked. The dealers said they had no records of the ammunition bought and sold by them.
“We found the weapons, but the gun house owners under scanner have separate places to hide the ammunition and it is sold as per the order received. Usually, a cartridge for Rs 30 abroad for shooters is sold for as much as Rs 60 to gun house owners who sell it anywhere between Rs 100 and Rs 200, depending on the demand,” said a top police official attached with the investigations.
The case of shooters importing weapons and cartridges and later selling them to unscrupulous weapon dealers first came to the fore in the high-profile Nabha case when armed men attacked the jail and freed two terrorists and four gangsters. Over 250.12-bore cartridges meant for shotgun events were recovered by the UP Police when they arrested one of the gangsters allegedly involved in the Nabha jailbreak case.
AIG, organised crime control unit of the Punjab Police, Gurmeet Chauhan said, “Many gangsters in the past have been arrested with such ammunition and there is an urgent need to check such ammunition flowing into the market.”
Budding shooters in the country compete every year and once they perform to a certain level in the shooting nationals, they are allowed to import 15,000 cartridges per annum. “As per rules of the National Rifle Association of India, weapons can be sold by shooters after two years only to promising budding shooters but they illegally sell their ammunition to weapon dealers,” a shooter said.
