Police bust illegal arms racket, arrest eight in Bengaluru

The City Market police have arrested an eight-member interstate criminal gang involved in illegal arms trade and recovered 13 pistols and 52 live bullets.

The arrested men — Khadeer Khan, 32, and Faizullah Khan, 31, residents of RK Hegde Nagar; Vinay, 29, from Chennai; Parag Kumar, 39, from Uttar Pradesh; Shahnawaz Ansari, 29, from Gujarat; and Nasir Sheikh, 50, Salman Khan, 28, and Fakruddin, 37, from Madhya Pradesh — sourced the weapons from illegal dealers in the northern states and sold them in the city and other places.

KR Market inspector B G Kumarswamy and his team, on receiving information about the illegal arms racket, posed as buyers and asked Khadeer for weapons. Khadeer stayed at a lodge in GP Street to sell the weapons. The police team raided the lodge, caught Khadeer and seized two country-pistols and eight live bullets on January 29.

During interrogation, Khadeer confessed that he was part of the racket on the instructions of Faizullah, arrested last year by the Bagalur police in a case pertaining to the Arms Act and lodged in Parappana Agrahara Central Prison.

Police took Faizullah into custody on body warrant and probed further.

They learnt that Faizullah received the country-made weapons through criminals from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and New Delhi. Playing decoy, they contacted the other criminals.

Parag and Shahnawaz were called to Ghaziabad, where they were caught with pistols and bullets, while Nasir, Sultan and Fakruddin were caught in Shirdi with weapons. In all, police took a month to catch all the criminals.

Like Faizullah, Vinay bought weapons from the gang and sold them to his contact in Tamil Nadu. The gang came to sell the weapons after watching Faizullah on video.

The gang spoke to Faizullah only via video call and directly received orders for weapons to eliminate the possibility of being caught by the police. So, every time they spoke to Faizullah by video call, police took the risk of leaving him alone.

Police also paid Rs 20,000 in advance to the criminals’ account to maintain the façade of an actual deal.

Case background

Faizullah was arrested in an Arms Act case in 2020 and in a murder case where he had taken supari to kill a realtor in Sampigehalli in 2017. He sold pistols for Rs 60,000 to Rs 80,000.

Further investigations are on to nab the others involved.

Faizullah lived next to an illegal arms supplier and worked with him for a few years doing chores like weapons cleaning.

Following his death, Faizullah took over the illegal business. He used Khadeer, his elder sister's son, to supply weapons and operated the business through him since he is in jail.