The 76 security personnel killed by Maoists in Dantewada may have fallen to bullets from their own armouries. This startling corollary has emerged after a huge seizure of ammunition from security personnel in Uttar Pradesh.
UP Police Special Task Force (STF) has arrested six personnel, including three from the state police, two from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and a retired police sub-inspector. Ammunition weighing more than 245 kg was recovered.
Additional director general and head of STF Brij Lal said that task force chief Naveen Arora had received alerts immediately after the Dantewada incident about the possible nexus between some unscrupulous police and CRPF men and the Maoists.
Initial inquiries into the Dantewada killings had established that the arms and ammunition used by Maoists in the attack matched those used by the security forces.
Acting on a tip-off, the STF gathered intelligence on the black sheep within the forces and carried out electronic surveillance to nail them. Since Thursday, simultaneous raids were carried out at several places throughout UP.
Official sources said the raids at houses of two armourers posted in Jhansi led to the recovery of a lot of ammunition.
The STF conducted raids in Basti, Rampur, Moradabad and even Jharkhand capital Ranchi. Vinod Paswan, posted at the CRPF camp in Rampur, and Yashodanand Singh, a retired sub-inspector of the UP Police, emerged as the kingpins of the gang.
Brij Lal said these two security personnel used to collect empty cartridges from the police firing ranges and exchange them for live cartridges from armouries through their contacts in the forces.
“There have been thefts in armouries earlier too, but this is huge,” the officer said.
Asked who could be the clients of the arrested security men, he said: “Such a huge volume of arms could not have been bought by criminals or mafias… the ammunition was going to some bigger group.” He said whether the arms were being routed to Maoists or terrorists needed to be probed.
The recovery includes bullets of .38, 7.62 and .9 mm bore, and ammunition for INSAS, AK-47 rifles and SLRs, besides several magazines and spare parts of weapons.
Comments