AGARTALA: The Railway police has seized a AK-47 rifle along with a magazine at Lumding station in Assam from Agartala-bound Deoghar Express, a Railway official said on Wednesday.
However the person who was suspected to have been smuggling the rifle made good his escape during the seizure operation on Tuesday, he said.
A joint team of the RPF and GRP was conducting a routine check in the weekly Deoghar-Agartala Express on Tuesday night when they spotted a suspicious looking bag in a compartment at around 8.45 pm.
When they asked a young man sitting nearby about it he said it is a blanket and jumped off the train, he said.
The railway police personnel chased him but could not catch the man.
"During checking one AK-47 rifle with a magazine was recovered from a bag in the Deoghar Express. As per the procedure, the seized arm and magazine were handed over to GRP," the chief public relations officer of Northeast Frontier Railway Sabyasachi De told PTI.
The incident comes on the heels of GRP personnel arresting two suspected arms dealers from Bihar with four pistols and 15 bullets from the same station on April 3.
Another arms dealer who was with them had managed to escape but was identified and later arrested from Champahower in Tripura on April 5.