Punjab Police bust trans-border arms smuggling module; six arrested

Chandigarh, Nov 22 (IANS) Amritsar Commissionerate Police have busted a trans-border arms smuggling module backed by foreign-based smugglers with the arrest of six people, said Punjab Director General of Police (DGP) Gaurav Yadav here on Friday.

Those arrested have been identified as Vinod Kumar, Yuvraj Singh, Surkhap Singh, Jugraj Singh, Amritpal Singh and Prabhdeep Singh.

Ten pistols, including three sophisticated 9MM Glock pistols, along with 10 cartridges were recovered from from their possession, the police said.

DGP Yadav said the preliminary investigation revealed that the accused have been in contact with a foreign-based smuggler, who has been pushing huge consignments of weapons into Indian territory via drones and other means.

He said further investigations were underway to establish backwards and forward linkages.

Sharing more details, Commissioner of Police (Amritsar) Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said following inputs about the involvement of accused Amritpal in the smuggling of weapons, police teams from the CIA Amritsar laid a trap and arrested him along with Prabhdeep from Amritsar.

On their disclosure, police teams have recovered two 9MM Glock pistols and five .32 bore pistols along with six cartridges from the location pinpointed by them near the Verka bypass.

In another operation based on intelligence inputs about the illegal weapon smuggling, Bhullar said police teams nabbed accused Jugraj Singh along with his three accomplices and upon their disclosure recovered one Glock pistol and two .32 bore pistols along with four cartridges concealed at an isolated location near Guru Nanak Dev University campus in Amritsar.

Further investigations were on and more arrests and recoveries are expected in the coming days, he said.

Two cases -- one under Section 25 of the Arms Act and Section 111(1) (2) (3) (4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at Police Station Cantonment in Amritsar and another under Section 25 of the Arms Act at Police Station in Verka -- have been registered.

--IANS

vg/svn