The Ghaziabad police have arrested an Imam of a mosque and recovered 12 country made pistols and 11 magazines from his possession.
The Imam was planning to sell pistols to gangs in Vijay Nagar area of the city. All the confiscated pistols were made in illegally-run ordinance units of Munger district in Bihar, notorious for its countrymade weapons industry.
Ghaziabad police chief Deepak Kumar said on Tuesday that the accused cleric Hafiz Mohammad Tahir runs a gun smuggling gang in Muzaffar Nagar district which supplies ‘Munger’ brand countrymade weapons to people in Western Uttar Pradesh.
He used to procure these guns on a large scale and then sell the same to people on demand. The Munger brand weapons knows as ‘Sixers’ are in great demand as the weapons can fire multiple rounds. Its price ranges from Rs 30,000 to Rs 60,000 per piece. Till now he has sold over 500 pistols of Munger brand, the Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) said.
During the interrogation Tahir confessed that as he was the Imam of the Jannatabad Mosque in Jansath town of Muzaffar Nagar no one suspected him of being involved in an arms racket.
Once in 2008 he was arrested when caught red handed delivering pistols to buyers.
He further confessed that he used to buy pistols from Munger at Rs 10, 000 to Rs 12,000 per piece and sell them at Rs 22,000 to Rs 32,000 per piece. Most demand comes from Shamli, Kairana and Kandhla areas of West UP. He found one potential buyer in Ghaziabad, but he was nabbed before he could materialise the deal.
The SSP said, “The police succeeded to nab him by sending a decoy customer. He promised to deliver a dozen pistols for Rs 32,000 per piece. Once the guns were made available to the decoy, he informed the police and we nabbed the Imam right then. The Ghaziabad SSP announced a reward of Rs 5,000 to the police team involved in the crime.”