Chandigarh: Punjab police on Sunday claimed to have busted an interstate illegal arms smuggling racket with the arrest of its four members after recovering nine .32 bore country-made pistols along with eight live cartridges from their possession.
Director General of Police (DGP), Punjab, Gaurav Yadav said that the accused had been identified as Gurmanjot Singh of Chakkar in Ludhiana, Kuldeep Singh alias Manak of village Lehra in Ludhiana, Sukhchain Singh of village Moom in Barnala and Sandeep Singh of village Bhaini Gujran in Ludhiana.
Pertinently, both the accused Manak and Gurmanjot Singh, who became known to each other while at Ludhiana jail in the year 2016, had a criminal background with many cases pertaining to attempt to murder, arms Act, snatching, theft etc registered against them and they were out on bail at present. Accused Gurmanjot was in contact with Madhya Pradesh based illegal arms smugglers after he met them at Ludhiana Jail in year 2022.
DGP Yadav said that following reliable inputs about the movement of arms smugglers possessing consignment of illegal arms and ammunition brought by them from Sendhwan in district Barwani of Madhya Pradesh (MP) with the intention to carry out criminal activity in the state, Punjab police laid a special police check-point at Patran-Khanauri road in Patiala and apprehended all the accused persons, who were travelling in their white Swift car and recovered nine pistols.
DGP Gaurav Yadav said that all the accused persons were involved in supplying weapons to criminal gangs in Punjab as well as neighbouring states.
