E-Paper
Pune police seize 79 pistols, arrest 90 persons in 2022
The Pune police have seized 79 pistols in connection with 68 criminal cases and arrested 90 persons in 2022
Pune: The Pune police have seized 79 pistols in connection with 68 criminal cases and arrested 90 persons in 2022. Whereas they had recovered 92 pistols in connection with 83 criminal cases, arrested 111 persons, and confiscated 554 cartridges during searches and anti-crime operations carried out by the crime branch in 2021. According to crime branch sleuths, the decline in the recovery of firearms in 2022 is due to various factors such as persistent crackdown on gangs of gunrunners, invocation of the amended Arms Act, and a rise in MCOCA cases enabling the police to keep such criminals in jails for longer terms.
The weapons were seized from individuals involved in crimes, persons who had kept them in their houses to future-proof their lives against rival gangsters, and sellers who had brought them for sale in the city.
According to the crime branch, weapons are kept with the intention of settling scores with political rivals, carrying out armed robberies and looting, and even brandishing openly in public to spread terror in the hearts of area residents. The firearms find their way into the city from as far as Bihar, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh (MP). In some villages in MP, manufacturing firearms is a cottage industry which in turn has fuelled demand for them in metropolitan cities like Pune for committing heinous crimes like robberies, issuing threats, and even murders.
DCP (crime) Amol Zende said, “During house search operations, we find these weapons hidden by individuals as self-protection against rival gang members. This is a serious crime and we lodge FIRs against such accused, and sections of the Arms Act are invoked against them. Firearms are convenient weapons in the hands of criminals who use them for different purposes in various types of crimes.” Firearms enable gangs to perpetrate heinous crimes, and such weapons are a threat to the safety of citizens, Zende said.
