KOLKATA: Six persons, including two Rifle Factory Ishapore (RFI) officials, were arrested by the Kolkata Police from the Babughat area here for their alleged involvement in smuggling arms to Maoists, an official said today.
The arrests were made by the police's Special Task Force (STF) and seven revolvers, one carbine and 10 rounds of ammunition were seized from them, police said.
Kolkata Police, Deputy Commissioner, STF, Murli Dhar said acting on a tip-off, a team laid a trap at the Babughat area, near the Hoogly river, last evening and caught four men with the arms.
The officer said the STF arrested alleged arms smugglers Ajay Kumar Pandey and Jayasankar Pandey from Bihar's Nalanda district and Umesh Roy and Kartik Shaw of Ichchapur in West Bengal's North-24 Parganas district.
Dhar said after interrogation of Ajay and Jayasankar, STF sleuths arrested RFI junior works managers Sushanta Basu and Sukhda Murmu from their Nawapara residences in the North 24 Parganas district.
They were arrested late last night for allegedly supplying the revolvers to them, he added.
"Based on the information by our source about a possible arms deal in the city, we had laid a trap and arrested four people from the Babughat area last evening," Dhar said.
Preliminary investigation revealed that the arms were smuggled out of the Ichapur Rifle Factory with the help of its two officers, he said.
Elaborating on their modus operandi, the STF officer said the racket was probably active since 2008 and were supplying arms and ammunitions to Maoists in Bihar.
"They (the arrested) used to smuggle out parts of the arms scrapped by the rifle factory and these smugglers used to mend and sell them to Maoists in Bihar," he said Sleuths are also probing whether they had supplied arms to insurgent groups in Nepal, the officer said.
"Ajoy and Jayasankar have admitted that they had smuggled out 16 Insas rifle and several SLRs a couple of years ago and had sold them to Maoists in Bihar," he said.
The STF has slapped charges of criminal conspiracy and habitually dealing in stolen property along with the Arms Act against the accused, he added.
The Kolkata Police STF had in September last year arrested a junior works manager of RFI for allegedly smuggling parts of SLRs and Insas rifles out of the factory and selling them to illegal arms manufacturers.