Arms smugglers conspired with Central Ordinance Depot to steal 76 AK series rifles

New Delhi, July 22: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a supplementary chargesheet in connection with the recovery of AK-47 roles case that was reported at Bihar.

This case relates to the recovery of 3 AK-47 rifles on the disclosure of accused Shamsher Alam from the house of his sister Rizwana Begum in 2018. The investigation carried out by NIA revealed that a group of arms smugglers conspired with certain employees of Central Ordinance Depot (COD) at Jabalpur, M.P. and stole more than 76 AK series rifles, their parts and 13 SLR's from the sheds of COD, Jabalpur during the period 2012-2018.

The king-pin of the racket viz. Purshottam Lal Rajak used good parts of the stolen weapons to make cannibalised AK's and SLR rifles and further sold them to weapon-dealers in Munger, Bihar. These rifles were further smuggled across Bihar and sold to Naxalites and criminals. 22 AK rifles stolen from COD, Jabalpur have already been recovered.

So far the NIA has charged Rizwana Begum, Shamsher Alam, Md. Imran Alam, Niyazul Rahman, Md. Irfan Alam, Purshottam Lal Rajak, Suresh Thakur, Chandrawati Devi, Shivendra Rajak, Bajrang Shankar, Manoj Singh, Manzar Alam and Mohd. Mursheed.