india

Updated: Dec 23, 2018 10:46 IST

Sometime in July-August this year, Purushottam Rajak, a long-standing employee of the army-run central ordnance depot (COD) in Madhya Pradesh’s Jabalpur, who has now been accused of being the ring leader of more than a decade-long arms smuggling racket running from the COD, stole a few parts of phased-out AK-47 assault rifles from the facility and kept them in his car.

His plan was to use these to fabricate weapons to be sold at Munger’s popular but illegal gun market. Rajak feared his house wasn’t safe. And so the parts remained in his car for a couple of days as he kept going in and out of the arms depot unchecked, a National Investigation Agency (NIA) probe has revealed.

He and his associates in Bihar’s Munger were selling assault rifles, made from the usable parts of dumped weapons, to Maoists and criminal gangs from 2003, say investigators.

“Rajak told interrogators that his luck ran out one day and he was caught with the parts still in his car. But he managed to convince authorities at the COD that someone must have planted the parts in his car. Rajak claims he was let off without any inquiry,” said an official of the NIA familiar with the interrogation .

Pointing to the lax security arrangements at the facility, the official, who asked not to be identified, added that Rajak managed to go in and come out of the COD at least five times with the parts still lying in his car.

Queries sent to the army authorities in this regard remained unanswered.

In September, Rajak was finally picked up by the Bihar police which was keeping an eye on his associates in Munger, one of the biggest hubs of illegal arms manufacturing in the country. The associate, Mohammed Irfan, arrested on August 29 with three AK-47 rifles from Jamalpur of Munger, revealed the alleged involvement of Rajak and another COD storekeeper, Suresh Thakur, in the case.

Due to its cross-country and national security ramifications, the ministry of home affairs asked NIA to investigate the case.

Initial estimates from the Bihar police and NIA reveal that more than 125 AK-47 weapons, fabricated from the parts of phased-out assault rifles by the Army and dumped in its stores in Jabalpur, may have reached Munger in the last five years.

Investigators in NIA and Bihar police say that having been an armourer himself, Rajak knew how to fabricate a weapon using spares from different weapons.

Investigators say Rajak retired in 2008 but was re-employed by the COD on contract.

The Bihar police and the NIA have managed to recover around two dozen AK-47 rifles so far in the case.