Kolkata police arrest 5 men from Uttar Pradesh with illegal firearms

Image used for representation purposes. | Photo credit: Getty Images/Istockphoto

A special task force of the Kolkata Police (STF) on Monday (January 27, 2025) caught five men from Uttar Pradesh with illegal firearms in the Baithakkhana area in Sealdah, Kolkata. This was the second convulsion of illegal weapons in the same town in the last two months.

Kolkata police feared that the arrested men were “planning to commit a crime in the city.” As the news spread, the arrest caused panic among the locals. There was a case at the STF police station, and the suspects, Rahul Yadav, Shivshankar Yadav, Aditya Maurya, Devank Gupta and Rukesh Sahani, were produced in the Bankshall court in Kolkata on Tuesday, January 27, 2025.

Speaking about the arrests, the Kolkata Police Commissioner, Broj Kumar Verma, said: “The tasks of the intelligence agency are not a day of one day. We had reports, we had suspects surveillance, and when the information matured, we arrested them. ”

Answering a question about whether the criminals outside the state were operating in West Bengal and why their movement could not be restricted, Mr. Verma said that the interstate movement was massive in all states, but who among them were criminals were a Intelligence issue agencies and constantly worked on it.

Rupesh Kumar, commissioner Crime Police, said the suspects were of several parts of Uttar Pradesh and had no valid documents for firearms. “We have sent to the Local Police from UP and we request more details about the records of previous cases and the profiles of the suspects. The crimes they had planned to commit is not clear yet, ”he added.

According to preliminary research, the suspects had been in the city during the last two days and were placed in a local shelter.

Police confiscated two firearms: a 7 mm semi -automatic and another individual shot, and 15 rounds of living ammunition.

This is a significant development since multiple shootings in the state have been linked to illegal weapons. In one of those incidents, the councilor of the Trinamool Congress, Sushanta Ghosh, was shot in Kolkata and another Councilor Dulal Sarkar was killed in the Malda district. Both attacks involved the use of weapons outside the State.

Multiple arrests

On November 9, 2024, the STF broke a similar illegal weapons racket in Baithakkhana and arrested a suspect. Five firearms were seized, including three single -shot firearms and two 7 mm semi -automated guns. Around 90 rounds of cartridges were recovered, 50 rounds of 8 mm live cartridges and 40 rounds of live 7.65 mm live cartridges were recovered. The arms were being smuggled from the Munger de Bihar area.

On November 13 of last year, the STF along with several other contiguous state agencies revealed an illegal firearms unit in Muger. It was the 14th operation of this type carried out jointly by the Kolkata Police STF in Bihar and Jharkhand in the last three years.

According to STF officials, 58 people had been arrested or detained from Bihar and Jharkhand in joint raids between 2022 and 2024 for their alleged links with arms manufacturing units.