If there was a prize for criminality with chutzpah, the gunmakers of Bihar's Munger district would win it hands down. Or hands up. A Central government employment scheme has been funding several talented gunsmiths in this district for years. Munger is the traditional hub of a flourishing indigenous gun-making industry, till recently geared to making crude single-shot kattas and now moving on to West-inspired pistols and rifles. It's all illegal, of course.According to district police sources, many lathe workshops - fronts for mini-gun factories - have been set up by unemployed young men in the area with loans taken under the Prime Minister's Rozgar Yojana (PMRY) and other welfare programmes. The PMRY was launched on October 2, 1993 to assist less educated and poor unemployed youth in setting up micro level self-employment ventures. Initially, the PMRY was implemented only in urban areas but since 1994-95, it is being implemented in both urban and rural areas."We are collecting details of the exact number of people who have availed of loan under the government-sponsored scheme so far to set up mini-gun factories in the guise of lathe workshops," Munger Superintendent of Police (SP) Naveen Kumar Jha said.One of Jha's predecessors, M. Sunil Nayak had, in fact, discovered as many as 14 illegal gun factories that had been set up by the people to manufacture contraband arms after getting loan under the PMRY scheme during his tenure."On the surface, lathe units are meant for other purposes but in reality, they are used for making the intricate parts of the weapons," Nayak, now SP in West Champaran district, said. "I have arrested about 20 people who were using their lathe machines for making arms," he added.After the recent seizure of 99 Made-in-Munger pistols scale in New Delhi, a team of the Delhi Police 's Special Cell made the same bizarre discovery, that PMRY loans were being employed to strengthen the local gunmaking tradition.The PMRY shocker apart, Munger remains a theatre of the bizarre. Gunrunners were recently caught running a minigun factory on a boat right in the middle of the Ganges. Even the district police, long used to Munger's unbelievable ways, were recently stunned to discover the floating makeshift illegal arms factory. "They had fixed a lathe machine in the boat and were busy making arms when the police surrounded them," the SP said. It's hardly surprising then that Munger is the district with the largest number of lathe machinebased workshops in the country.According to one police estimate, around 300 flourishing illegal arms factory are still functional in the district despite numerous police crackdowns on gunmakers and their gunrunning business partners in recent years.It's not an easy job in a district awash with firearms. Recently, when a local police team raided Bardah village in the district to bust a gang of gunrunners, it was attacked by the villagers, led by the women. "The attackers were led by women who not only snatched back the six unlawful weapons from the cops that had been seized from the village but also accused the policemen of misbehaviour," said Munger SP Jha. For Munger police, Bardah is the main hub of all activities related to the manufacture of illegal arms. "There is hardly any house in the village which is not involved in making arms," Jha said. "Many of its residents are serial offenders who have been arrested on the charge of making illegal weapons many times. As soon as they get bail in the case, they go back to their profession."Jha said that Mohammed Feroz Alam from Munger, one of the accused arrested by the Delhi Police with 99 pistols recently, had also been arrested for the same offence in the past. "In fact, 80 per cent of the people involved in the arms trade have been arrested many times," he said. The district police were, therefore, not surprised when the two persons-Alam and Niranjan Mishra-were held in Delhi. "Ninety nine pistols may seem to be a big haul elsewhere but we recover as many weapons almost every week," the SP said. "Hardly a week passes when we do not bust an illegal mini-gun factory."Munger's famed gunsmiths are no longer dependent on the manufacture of kattas - country-made single-shot guns - to make a living. They have now graduated to making replicas of modern weapons.The recent seizure of 99 Mungermade pistols by the Delhi Police showed just how good these once katta-makers have become. Most of these pistols were stamped: 'Only for Army use: Made in US', but all were made in the dingy lathe workshops of Munger. Weapons recovered from different parts of the country with engravings like 'Made in Italy' and 'Made in China' have been traced to the Munger arms bazaar.According to police sources, so good are the makers that they create exact replicas of the wellknown models of international gunmakers such as Smith and Wesson, Webley and Scott, Benelli and Beretta. Not only this, Munger Superintendent of Police (SP) Naveen Kumar Jha said that a carbine was also recovered from the arms peddlers. The Munger carbine has not come up for open sale yet. Most of these copied arms can be purchased for anything between Rs 30,000 and Rs 75,000, depending on the desperation of the client, usually in a big city. Bulk orders get discounts.Traditionally it was the good, old kattas that made Munger famous in the illegal arms trade. They have been in great demand in all states and neighbouring countries such as Nepal and Bangladesh because of their solid make and reliability.Jha said the arms peddlers procure a great deal of iron scrap from the defunct gun factories in the city as well as the railway workshop at Jamalpur to manufacture weapons. In fact, 'Made in Munger' arms are much sought-after not only by smalltime criminals but also by terrorists and Maoists. The Delhi Police had earlier discovered that the weapons used in the Jama Masjid firing by Indian Mujahideen operatives had been procured from Munger.Senior state police officials believe that a concrete plan to rehabilitate those in the gun-making trade for generations is the key to putting an end to the mini-gun factories. Most of the arrested peddlers have told the police that they cannot do anything else to eke out their livelihood."This tradition has been going on for generations in several villages such as Bariarpur, Ram Nagar and Qasimbazaar since the time of Bengal ruler Mir Qasim who had shifted his capital to Munger and set up an an arms factory there," he said.